Double facepalm

I found two news articles about enacting gun laws in Nevada in the wake of the Carson City shooting last month, and both of them made my jaw drop. You have to be an airhead to write or say some of this stuff, and I thought I would fisk both articles this morning.

First up is this one, and this just begs to be pointed out:

"Nevada National Guard Sgt. Caitlin Kelley, one of the victims in the IHOP attack, responded to the shooting by calling for a ban on assault weapons, which can be purchased without a background check at many gun shows or through private sellers."

It would be better written if it said that most common firearms can be purchased privately, but are mostly subjected to a background check at gunshows. That would at least not be misleading or disingenuous, unlike this:

“I can’t imagine why we are even selling assault weapons to civilians,” said Kelley, who was shot in the foot and still uses a wheelchair. “There’s no reason for an AK-47 or an M-16 or an M-4 to be in a civilian’s home.”

AK-47s, M16s, and M4s are very very rare in the US. The weapon in question was illegally converted to full auto by a man who could have cared less for any law barring him from a tool to kill people; the response to this apparently is to have one of the victims of the shooting tell everyone that psychopathic killers shouldn't be allowed to buy automatic rifles.

Washoe County Sheriff Mike Haley agreed, saying: “I don’t see any logic to having assault weapons available to the public.” But he said banning such weapons would spark a sharp response by gun-rights advocates.

You correctly answered your own question there, chief. Way to go. The "logic" to having rifles available to the public is that the public wants rifles; and for every one scumbag that uses one for harm, hundreds of thousands or more peaceable men and women put them to good use. Because they are desired by far more good people than bad, they are available; and I reckon they will stay available for a long while to the good folks in Nevada.

Going now into a full blown lie:

Semi-automatic assault weapons can easily be converted into automatic weapons — which are the same thing as machine guns — with a simple kit available online or at gun shows, officials said.

Nope. Wrong. Erroneous. How this garbage keeps getting written is beyond me, but to clear things up, you cannot buy "simple kits" online or at gunshows, or anywhere besides criminals to make rifles fire automatically. You can purchase the fire control components to make an AR rifle fire automatically, but they're heavily regulated by the ATF, and so is the receiver that those fire control parts go into. The number of these receivers is finite, and the price to own one is high. I have seen booths at gunshows that will gladly sell you an automatic weapon, legally, which will set you back at least $10,000 for a cheap one, and you will have months and months of paperwork to do before you can own it. You can manufacture your own full automatic weapon in your basement out of scrap metal if you are mechanically inclined, or if you have access to metalworking equipment you could likewise turn some rifles into machine guns. You can also buy all the parts you would need to make a bomb from your local Home Despot, and assembling one would be way less effort than making a semi-auto AK into an automatic weapon, and the killing potential would be much higher. Chew on that for awhile.

This line was my first facepalm:

What happened at the IHOP “was as close to a war as most people will ever come, and they were helpless to defend against it,” Haley said. “But because of our love affair with weapons, we are subjecting the public to this type of violence. If this is going to change, the public has to stand up and demand change.”

This may sound cold, but being "helpless to defend" yourself is a personal choice. Sadly, the National Guard has largely taken away that personal choice by disarming Soldiers who, by their very title, are charged with guarding our nation. I'd say a lunatic shooting civilians with a rifle in an IHOP is threat to [the Nation] that could have been stopped had these Soldiers been armed, or by some yahoo eating breakfast who happened to be armed to protect his or her gift of life. How are you supposed to defend your people if you are not armed? How can you swear an oath to defend a nation and then be totally unprepared at keeping your charge? Does the public really believe that the National Guard is only supposed to shoot foreign enemies on some other soil? How the Sheriff can profess the above and then in the same breath advocate taking away the very tools to allow defense against it is bizarre.

If you really want to do a double facepalm like I did this morning, look no further than the comments to this story. It boggles the mind. A quick Google search then yielded this article that has almost the same shitty verbiage as the first, but with some extra pizaaaaaz!

"I think it's a good question to ask: Why does a typical citizen need to have an assault weapon?" he said. "I think we're at the point where we have to have that discussion. Can we protect citizens without impacting other people's rights?"

Go right ahead and have that discussion, because it's not going to go the way that you want it to go. I have to point out that a man's rights have absolutely nothing at all to do with protecting citizens, and are not measured by need. You have rights; either use them or don't, but get it out of your head that you can protect people by dishonoring them with a violation their rights.

Hey lookie! This article has lies, too:

Seven states have assault weapons bans: California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Virginia.

Not in Virginia; although if Old Dominion Dems have their way, they would scoop them up in a heartbeat, which is why it's been noted that we won't be seeing many of them winning elections in the near future.

Despite being diagnosed as schizophrenic, Sencion legally purchased the weapon from a private seller in California.

But you just said that these weapons have been banned in California! How can you say that they've been banned there, and then say that he legally bought them there? Great editing! These articles are the only reason why I bother to read the news.

Coming or going?

MCALLEN, Texas (Reuters) - U.S. Border Patrol agents found a rocket launcher, assault rifles and explosives near the Rio Grande river in Texas, the agency said on Wednesday, a discovery that suggests a link to Mexico's drug wars.

[snip]

Officials theorized that the guns were waiting to be smuggled across the border into Mexico, but said that was just speculation.

It's good to put blind speculation in a news article and present it to the world as fact. No big deal.

So a cache of weapons including grenade launchers, rocket launchers, and C-4 explosives were "intended to go South" based on aforementioned speculation and past cases? Whatever. No doubt these items were bought at the local gunshow for next to nothing with no background check.

If these weapons weren't being transported North by cartel members who got them from the Mexican government, then they had to have been provided by a US government entity that has the ability to acquire them. Wonder who that could be.

Terminology fail

MISSOULA, Mont. – Authorities searching a 30-square-mile swath of rugged Montana forest for a former militia leader and survivalist say the man was prepared for his shootout with sheriff's deputies and left several caches of food in the area.

Alright, so the guy they're tracking sounds like he's not come to a peaceful agreement with his government in quite some time, but what's with branding him a survivalist? Aren't we all survivalists, or do some humans not breath air?

Fishing for gun news this morning

Other countries must think America is nucking futs with the crazy that is in the news these days. We must be modern day Sodom and Gomorrah with all the Slut Walks, Shania Twain Love Triangles, The Price of a Suitcase of Cocaine in DC - it looks pretty awful.

I did pick up on this article warning America of the obvious dangers of barring doctors from counciling you on having guns in the home where your children are. It's so full of the same ignorant anti-gun rhetoric that has been going on for decades that it could have been written in 1971 and just reposted. It's that bad.

I'm too lazy to fisk the whole thing, but here's a little bit of fun anyways:

Florida is set to become the first state to pass a law that would limit doctors' ability to council parents about gun safety in the home. Pediatricians decry the law as wrongheaded, and they're backed by statistics that suggest the law will kill kids.

This is the part that I'm going to attack most viciously - "backed by statistics." So if all of these studies that you claim really do back your story with statistics and all, then where the fuck are they? The first link you have in the article, in the paragraph where you say that the Florida Pediatric Society "expects" an increase in injury and death from having guns in the home with children, links to "The Top 10 Leading Causes of Death." Wanna guess what's not on that list? Yeah, anything at all to do with guns. Bummer.

I caution doctors and journalists from hanging too much of their hope on expectations, as reality can be a real drag. Expectations are also not solid conclusions to draw from a study.

Next up you cite the infamous Kellerman study from 1986 (and I notice that you don't link to that one. I don't blame you) where Dr. Kellerman found that having a gun in the home makes you 43 times more likely to be killed by some shit or something. It's been years since I read that piece, but I recall his statistics also came to the conclusion that innocuous stuff like having a garage or PeeWee Herman doll makes you about certain to be killed by something. That study has been so thoroughly debunked that it's almost laughable that the author even mentions it.

The next link about doctors "decrying" not being able to warn incompetent parents about guns in the home - the one hyperlinking over the words "injury and death in children" - links to a health article talking about running related injuries in active kids. Do doctors warn parents about the dangers of their kids running? If it's so dangerous and all, maybe it's a good idea for doctors to council all of us dumbass parents about the hazards of life. Do doctors even get training on how to council people? Are they like Chaplains, but with medical skills? I can identify so many dangers to kids from where I sit right now that maybe I should sign up for my pediatrician to council me every single day, that my kids might live longer than I did. . . . .oh, wait.

"For pediatricians, prevention is the name of the game," St. Petery said.

Huh. To think that this whole time I've been taking my tribe of ankle biters to the doctor for vaccines and illness related stuff, when it's now quite obvious I should be bombarding him with questions regarding the dangers of running, septicemia, and Alzheimer's. Aggghhhh, I feel so silly right now.

More than one-third of American homes have at least one gun at home, but a 2007 study found 70 percent of guns are not stored safely.

Oooooh. . . .another study. Check that one out for details of how a survey about how guns were stored in homes was construed by one pediatrician to mean that 70 percent of those guns were stored improperly. Doctor DuRant knows this shit for real Yo, because of that huge block of training he went through in medical school that covered how to properly store firearms in the home in every situation; you know, that instruction you get in your third year right in between lessons on how to council people and the one on how to conduct years long studies about such things like gun violence and autoerotic asphyxiation. Doctors are like Jack Bauer, but with stethoscopes and latex gloves instead of Sigs and H&Ks.

"I would think there should be a law that says if you don’t [council parents about gun safety], that should be malpractice," said David Hemenway, a professor of health policy at the Harvard School of Public Health who studies injury prevention.

Cool! I'm down with that, because if parents have a claim that you didn't council them about the dangers of guns in the home with their children and they got hurt, then they will also have remedy when their kids impail themselves on a pair of scissors, tumble down the stairs and bust their dome-piece, choke to death on a hermit crab, or wash their intestines out with peroxide. Does your doctor council you about every danger your kid could encounter in the home? Cause what your sayin is that you consider a doctor to be at fault for not giving parents fair warning about common hazards.

Children in the United States are 11 times more likely to die accidentally from a gun injury compared with children in other developed countries, he said.

Oh come on! You know that's bullshit right there; you don't even offer a link or the name of a study. But while we're on it, did you know that MyHealthNewsDaily writers and AAP doctors in the United States are 43 times more likely to die from a rare venereal disease they caught from licking their stamp collection than are MyHealthNewsDaily writers and AAP doctors from Botswana? Honest Abe!

The writer goes on to try and link child suicides using firearms to a study about the dangers of the internet - no guns mentioned in there. Here's the gist of the entire article summed up for you:

The best way to keep children safe from gun injury is not to own one, Hemenway said. This is also the position of the AAP.

Yup. We got that from you, boss. But I have to ask you: in your professional experience, what's the best way keep children safe from violent scumbags, home intruders, or dangerous animals? Counciling?

***Update: Ricky the doctor chips in to say that counciling you about everything imaginable because he thinks it's dangerous is "within the scope of his practice." Hey Ricky, does that include medical malpractice? Last I heard, doctors kill far more people every year from negligence than every firearm death combined. Is it absurd to suggest a law making it so doctors start their counciling with a disclaimer to stay the hell away from doctors because they are known to be extremely hazardous to your health?

Give me all your waffles!!! This is a stickup!!

A video from a robbery at a Waffle House shows three gunman running into the restaurant and throwing people around. That's a frightening scenario for the gunnies; one on one is bad enough, but one against three? Bad odds.

The video mentions that one of the customers "went out to his car and got his gun", which is a stupid place to keep a firearm if you have any expectation of using it when you need it. I guess stashing it in the glove box works fine for shooting at the robber's SUV after they decided not to kill you and are making a clean gettaway. This was in Texas, by the way, which has a past history of gunman storming restaurants. One would think that this lesson has already been learned.

I love the lack of editorial oversight on the "Highpoint 9mm Assault Rifle." It reminds me of this handy chart for the media on how to identify firearms. Any shooty type of weapon is either an Assault Thingie or an AK-15/AR-47 to our helpful friends who make up the news.

Clever wording

The press is famous for it, and no doubt this article about the US ambessador to Mexico resigning does not disclose all of the facts.

This gave me a snort this morning:

Calderon's office on Saturday said U.S.-Mexico relations remained solid despite Pascual's resignation and the two nations would continue working together to deepen their relationship "as neighbors and friends."

But the alliance has recently been soured by the public dispute between Calderon and Pascual and Washington's failure to stop weapons smuggling into Mexico.

"Clever girl" - Muldoon, Jurassic Park

So now we have the ATF Project Gunrunner scandal -- in which federal agents were ordered to basically facilitate the smuggling of weapons into Mexico -- being sold as "Washington's failure to stop weapons smuggling." B.E.A.U.Tiful wordsmithing! I would have never thought to put it like that.

Why lie when you can simply not tell the truth?

Are these the new dangerous times?

When I was a kid, there was the always constant threat of all out nuclear war with Russia, which would have likely destroyed every living thing on the entire planet. I mean, Russia had something along the lines of 30,000 nuclear missiles, all of them pointed at the US, and that discounts their. . . .ahem. . .robust chemical and biological weapons programs, all of which were too, aimed at the free world.

To me, the threats that we face today pale in comparison. Not to downplay 9/11 or anything, as loosing thousands of Americans in a terrorist attack was definitely a defining time in this country, but for several decades people in the US went about their day knowing that if there was an attack, millions of people would die, and that is if everything didn't go as bad as we had been told.

Today I take a look at the news to find material to mock, and am treated with sensational headlines describing how some miscreant placed what could only be a plastic soda bomb on somebody's window sill, spraying high velocity shards of glass from a single window across ten whole feet of lawn, complete with breathtaking "RAW" footage of firefighters milling around their truck, and cops slowly walking through the woods with flashlights. There's also the breaking report of the DC GOP office getting its windows "shot out" (cracked, but still standing) by hard-core violent gangsters firing high velocity BBs from an air rifle. The audacity of these people. Oooh, and how can I forget the edge-of-your-seat breaking news story about shoppers in a mall in Roanoke loosing their shit over the sight of an old man walking the isles holding an umbrella, which they thought was an AK, or even an RPG picked up at a gunshow in Arizona for $38. It was raining that day, which is theoretically why a man would have on his person an umbrella; and the PEW PEW PEW sounds the man imagined coming out of the moist instrument were telepathically picked up by other shoppers and mistaken for actual automatic gunfire from a rifle. Lastly, the news is putting up a desperate attempt to scare the shit out of every American over the nuclear reactors in Japan with stories of "all hope is lost" and "DEATH CLOUDS!!!" DEATH CLOUDS will come and eat the brains of your children while they sleep peacefully in their beds dreaming childish stories of Chicken Little telling everybody that the sky is falling!

Be advised that DEATH CLOUDS are in no way related to DEATH BLOSSOMS (warning, language).

So if the latest round of news stories is any indication, America is about as secure as it could possibly be. And don't forget that this feeling of safety is facilitated in large part by bad ass Americans killing tangos across the globe.

Media sleight of hand

ISLAMABAD — An American CIA contractor facing murder charges in Pakistan has been released after the payment of "blood money" to the relatives of the victims, local officials said Wednesday.

Raymond Allen Davis has been in jail since Jan. 27, seriously straining ties between Pakistan and the United States.

Good for him that he's been turned loose and will not die in that country. It's unfortunate that he spent a month and a half in prison in Pakistan because he had to shoot two robbers, and that the Pakistani media made him out to be the villain. Of course, Davis doesn't get a warm welcome from our media either; read that first sentence above again. Still don't see? How about this one:

Pakistani law allows murder suspects to be set free if they compensate the heirs of their victims.

This is a common tactic amongst the disingenuous hacks that make up 99% of our media, both the newspapers and TV news: calling the shootees who were killed due to their own violent actions the "victims," which makes the shooter the aggressor. And "Blood Money?" What happend to "settlement," like it is here when some coked up lesbian actor destroys some innocent person's life with the hood of her Escalade? Nice try fuckers.

I get that Pakistani people are going to be pissed regardless of what the facts are; they watch the local news just like we do, and it's apparent that word smithing and fact twisting in journalism is a global phenomenon, like a big bolus of hippie is injected into the frontal lobe of every journalism grad. The Pakistani government is between a rock and a hard ass, as even our Head of State publically called Davis a diplomat, which seals the deal, leaving the Pakistani government having to face their own angry people. Bad place to be and all. Overall it was worked out peacefully, thankfully, but I just wish the douchebags working in front of cameras here in the states would do something honest for once in their lives and call a spade a spade. How hard is that?

Only metal detectors can stop gun violence

Unlike a number of suburban police departments, Detroit precincts do not have metal detectors and the front desks are not fitted with Plexiglass-type shields. They do have security cameras.

Which all add up to what, exactly, in regards to stopping a lunatic with a shotgun from walking in a-la Matrix style and shooting cops?

What is it with you media people having to pin some sort of explanation or qualifier on everything, no matter how stupid? About the only thing that would have stopped this attack before it happened is if the gunman was hit by a bus crossing the street towards the precinct. Thankfully, this attack punctuated the argument that hard targets are better at stopping violence once it starts, as the idea of a lone gunman throwing down against multiple armed and armored folk ending in favor of the more numerous is generally thought to be sound.

Wading into the current gun control debate with expert commentary

My-oh-my has this country come a long way in such a short period of time. In the wake of the Tucson shooting, all of the predictable cries by the usual suspects for more gun control have been largely met with shoulder shrugs and silence from the majority of lawmakers.

This, and all of the media lies that circulate regarding guns, makes it notable that for once gun owners aren't the ones that will have to bear the blame for some psychopath's rampage.

"Loughner, for one, reportedly used an extended magazine carrying 31 rounds. (Congress outlawed such magazines in 1994, but let the ban lapse in 2004.)"

Aaaahhnnnggt!! Wrong answer sport. Congress temporarily stopped the new manufacture of magazines like the one scumbag-shooty-guy from AZ used; they didn't ban them. Don't worry though, I expected y'all media types to expend yet more of your credibility (isn't it in the red these days) buhleeeet buhleeeet buhleeeting about what you know nothing of in order to push your agenda. It's what you do, and I love pointing it out and doing my small part to make you all look like jackasses.

As for bearing the blame, I'm happy to see that the bulk of its weight rests so well on such petite shoulders, despite it being a juvenile accusation. Not that I'm saying it's right, mind you; I'm just happy that it's not placed on all of us; and something also tells me that there's an unintended consequence of the Palin haters throwing this mess at her, there being no such thing as bad press and all.

Now for the fun stuff.

Back to this article, do yourself a favor and scroll down to the video and watch it. We have the National Urban League's Marc Morial saying, and I quote:

"With respect to gun control, there is no doubt. . .ah. . .that. . .ah. . .the Assault Weapon Ban and the repeal of the Assault Weapon ban was probably a mistake for the nation."

Hmmmmmm, you see. . . .about that. . . . I don't see how such a presumably smart man can say in the same sentence that it's "no doubt" that "probably" something is bad. Mr. Morial, would you also say that there's no doubt that syphilis is probably bad for tigers? Is it your position that ninjas are no doubt, probably bad news for the samurai? That's awesome! I feel the same way too! - (about the tigers, ninja, and samurai, not the Assault Thingie Ban)

I do support his position though that a knee jerk reaction by lawmakers to strip rights from an already agitated populace - who are flocking to buy firearms at the moment - in the wake of a violent shooting is probably no doubt a bad thing to do, especially considering that a great deal of the people buying the guns are doing it not so much in the interest of one day stopping a spree shooter, but because they don't trust lawmakers.

Now go to this link and scroll down to watch the video about the popularity of Glock pistols. This one, for me, defines how utterly stupid newscreatures are. Witness the raw footage of a bona fide dumb ass attack:

Chris Jansing, to guest Jose Diaz-Balart - " I know that in your years of reporting you've had alot of years of experience with all different types of weaponry."

Diaz-Balart - "Sure"

Jansing - "Help us understand the popularity of this type of gun because I think if you're not part of the gun culture for a lot of people this is a weapon that is used to kill people. . ."

Diaz-Balart - "yes"

Jansing - ". . .we've heard it's used to kill people."

Injecting myself into the discussion here, what the hell does this chic mean by "for a lot of people this is a weapon that is used to kill people"? Is that something like "tell me now Rosie, for a lot of people, mayonnaise is a product used to fatten people. . . .we've heard it's used to fatten people." Or, "tell me Chuck, for a lot of people, ninjas are weapons used to kill people. . . .we've heard they're used to kill people." Is that what she's talking about? You can see that I've used Rosie [O'Donnell] and Chuck [Norris] there as an example because they are, presumably, because of their vaguely associated credentials, known as being part of the fat and ninja culture, respectively. Rosie more so considering that she is known to be the size of a barge, so she might be a little more authoritative.

Diaz-Balart, being a journalist and all and highly trained in the art of the gun culture, is no doubt probably the best bet to be on a national news network chatting with a fellow journalist about something he knows so much about. I mean he knows two people who have Glocks - one a law enforcement officer, and another a friendly gun collector - and these two individuals know without a doubt why Glocks are probably popular, because one of them dropped theirs down some stairs and the other dropped his out the window of a car at 60 miles per hour.

That makes Diaz-Balart a fucking Glock savant!

I guess that since I dropped my Glock yesterday, that qualifies me to say that both of these retards wouldn't make a pimple on a gun owners ass (don't ask, it's not my saying), and I offer to you more evidence to support my claim:

Diaz-Balart - ". . . .there's a number of different millimeters available in weapon sizes. . ."

Looking at the handy chart on Gaston's website, I direct you to the "models" tab, and ask you if they are listed by caliber, or are they listed by millimeters? It must be a hidden language no doubt that can only probably be decoded by gun culture experts well skilled in the art:

Standard model? Lots of millimeters.
Compact model? Not so many millimeters.
Subcompact model? A few millimeters.
Competition model? Huge number of millimeters, like totally a bunch of them n' stuff.

Man though, all this talk about Glocks, heatahs, and millimeatahs makes me want to take a ride to the range and bust me some caps, after I throw my Glock 17 out the window of my truck and make myself a gun culture jedi knight, of course.

And the hits keep on comin'

Diaz-Balart - ". . .it's [Glocks] a natural pistol to get if you're not an expert on weapons."

And again, he later backs that claim up by offering his law enforcement buddy's experience tossing them down stairs and all; you can't claim to be an expert unless you drop the thing down some flights of stairs, and to be able to master this feat, you have to have Glock perfection. It's that simple. So if you've never handled a gun before, and consider yourself to not be an expert, you need to get a Glock first, and then drop it to become a master. Taking what he says literally, one can only deduct that the reason 65% of law enforcement choses Glock is because cops suck with firearms.

I'll have to ask my friends in law enforcement if they learned Glock dropping at the academy. One of them is issued a Sig, a fore-tay millimeter I hear, so he must suck - I don't think they drop test those - but I did personally witness him shoot expert with a rifle once on an Army range, so who knows.

Diaz-Balart goes on to say that the reason for 30 round "clips" (magazines) are popular for the non-gun tossing/dropping/mass murdering population is so that at the shooting range, you don't have to reload as much. That's probably an accurate statement, no doubt, but I would also add that people keep 30 round magazines for their nightstands, glove boxes, and also for competition. I'm an expert, remember, so I know. Of note though is that he says to reload the gun with regular clips, you have to take the clip out of the gun and manually load it with "bullets" using your thumb, and doesn't mention that most shooters have many of these clips, and that they can be used to charge the gun with "bullets" very rapidly. Like this guy:



Fast, huh!!

Ultimately, these two MSNBC people are trying to be honest in that they are doing their best to tell the world why Glock pistols are not the choice of crazies, but are in fact popular to cops and every one else. They would have been better served though giving this task of explaining these truths to someone of more experience than a journalist, but it no doubt would have probably been less entertaining. Admit it!

Model gun control

"To gain entry to the store, which is on a secure military base, customers must present valid identification, pass through a metal detector, yield to the security wand and surrender cellphones and cameras.

To buy a gun, clients must submit references and prove that their income is honestly earned, that their record is free of criminal charges and that their military obligations, if any, have been fulfilled with honor. They are fingerprinted and photographed. Finally, if judged worthy of owning a small-caliber weapon to protect home and hearth, they are allowed to buy just one. And a box of bullets."

This is to get into the only gun store in Mexico and buy a gun.

There are lots of things to be critical about in this article, the first of which is the claim by the author William Booth that Mexico's ridiculous gun laws are "a matter of pride" for Mexican citizens. How the hell does he know that? Did he do a survey? How can he say that with any authority when he claims later that legal gun sales are declining, but the black market is booming? Sounds to me like the proud Mexican citizens are doing an end run around the shenanigans and getting guns however they want.

The very last paragraph says that if you want a gun, just ask a Mexican police officer to provide you with an illegal one, the easiest way:

"The cop will bring it to your house and show you how to load it," Islas said. "Of course, it is technically illegal."

Well, no shit! There's about the only truth you will find in this whole article. Do notice the use of the word "technically," as in it's not really illegal despite being, you know, illegal. Kinda like 'rape-rape:' the police officer is friendly and providing you with a weapon that's not on Mexico's only gun store's precise list, so it's "technically" totally OK and stuff, and not at all a bad thing; and if you have sex with a girl that's under the age of consent, who's too drugged up to consent even if she legally could, and it like happened a long time ago and stuff, and you're popular, than it's OK too.

I'm starting to get the hang of the leftist ideology that breaking the law is cool as long as it's done properly.

As an afterthought, I wonder how many of those weapons handled in "strict military fashion" are handed to the ordinary citizens by friendly police officers -- who are only breaking the law out of the sheer goodness of their hearts -- and don't make it onto the list of extreme precision. You know the ones I'm talking about:

"Police Sales Only," is filled with weapons that ordinary citizens cannot legally buy - the heavy stuff, such as Bushmaster AR-15 assault rifles and Israeli Galil machine guns, plus gas and concussion grenades, as well as bulletproof vests and helmets.

Rest assured that those friendly police officers do not sell them illegally to the bad men who are flooding the US with narcotics. Nooosirrrreeeebob! It's odd though that I've actually seen pictures somewhere of weapons taken from Mexican drug cartel members' cold dead hands. Come to think of it, I've seen all of that stuff exactly as Booth has stated here, taken from criminals, and a lot of those weapons look just like the hardware that the Mexican military and police forces use.

Hmmmm. I'm thinkin that this gun store may keep precise records of firearms sold over the counter, but isn't keeping the most meticulous count of what gets sold under it. Must be easy to keep track when you're running the only store in an entire nation.

The game of Telephone and the human factor

When you don't have substance, give the masses Mexican Drug Farce stories.

I've picked through this article and its sources a bit, and I note that there is a glaring error, among others, from one part to the next part to the next.

In elementary school, this phenomenon was demonstrated to me and my class in the game called Telephone; whereas the teacher whispers instructions in the form of a couple of sentences in a student's ear, and then that student whispers it into another student's ear, and so on and so forth until the message makes it all the way through the class. The last student to hear the message speaks it out loud, which always ends up making the class roar with laughter as the message is butchered out of proportion to what the teacher initially had said. This game is a great demonstration of the human factor, which is the element of error applied in a situation from a well intentioned but error prone human.

Back to the article, let me show you where the human factor has skewed the facts from what was originally a statement made by Mexican President Felipe Calderon.

Sayeth the above linked article:

"One recently released study by the Woodrow Wilson Center and the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego found that out of 75,000 firearms confiscated by Mexican authorities in the last three years, 60,000 of them — or 80 percent — had come from the U.S."

To start with, I went to the Woodrow Wilson Center's website and browsed through their material to find the particular study that claims this; something you would expect National Investigative Correspondent Michael Isikoff to have done, considering he quoted them. Turns out that he did in fact quote them, though not word for word:

"According to information provided by the Mexican government, which has received training from ATF on identifying firearms, U.S.-origin firearms account for the vast majority of firearms seized in Mexico over the last few years. In May 2010, for example, President Calderon said that of the 75,000 firearms Mexico has seized in the last three years an estimated 80 percent or 60,000 firearms came from the United States." - U.S. Firearms Trafficking to Mexico: New Data and Insights Illuminate Key Trends and Challenges
Colby Goodman
Michel Marizco

Not the same, but close; Isikoff didn't skew the facts though. So now the question remains: did Felipe Calderon say that? I don't have an degree in investigative journalism, so it was incredibly hard for me to click the link cited in that study to find the news article with the quote.

Here's what Calderon actually said:

"Calderón said his government had seized 75,000 guns in Mexico in a three-year period and found that 80 percent of those whose origin could be traced were bought in the United States."

See that? "Whose origin could be traced." So we went from "80% were bought in the US" to "80% whose origin could be traced were bought in the US." That is not insignificant. What has happend here is that the authors of the study saw '75,000' and '80 percent', and they did some quick math and ran with that, instead of taking in what was actually said.

The difference is that of the alleged 75,000 guns confiscated in three years, not all of them were submitted for tracing to the ATF. If Mexican authorities had confiscated a hundred weapons from a drug bust, and fifty of them were full auto AK-47s with Russian and Chinese emblems stamped all over the receiver, twenty were RPGs and 40mm grenades, and the rest were AR-15 or M16 rifles, than why would they bother handing the whole lot over to the ATF when it's obvious that some of them didn't come from the US? The AR/M16 rifles and the 40mm grenades would be handed over to the ATF, as it's well known where they probably came from.

But that doesn't mean that they were purchased by the cartels from a gun store in the US, nor does it mean that they were all made there. What Calderon essentially said was that out of, say, 100 AR-15 or M-16 rifles confiscated, that 80 of those rifles originated in the US. Not surprising is that that family of rifles are generally - not always - but generally, made in the US of A, so no duh that they would be traceable back here. If I were an ATF agent and a Mexican Army Captain handed me a truck full of worn full-auto Galils and RPGs for tracing, I'd think he was a moron. They aren't manufactured in the US, and are not readily available. I would instead tell that Captain to submit them to an agent for the country where those weapons were made. It's common sense.

Back to the article, I found this little tidbit interesting:

"The report also faults a timid investigative strategy by ATF that concentrates on low level “straw purchasers” of illegal firearms rather than high level weapons trafficking organizations."

You don't say? Well, that makes sense too. Busting an element of a major cartel takes lots of time, effort, and danger, I would imagine. Monthly low risk busts would look great on the resume', and you have way less chance of getting into a Blackhawk down type shootout if you call in the SWAT team on Bubba John's trailer at 3am. I mean, who doesn't fear the Reaper, right?

I found lots more stuff that doesn't make the papers because it would be bad for the Mexican Drug Farce meme. It's not hard to find. One would think that an "authorized journalist" would take the ten minutes out of his morning and track down the quote that is the main thrust of his article.

But that's just not how humans roll.

The class is laughing now, so perhaps you reporter-like critters should use some sort of editorial oversight or something to cut down on the human factor.

Patrol Devices

What else do you call a Glock chambered in .50 Caliber Terror in the hands of a Montgomery County's finest?

Garland stole several items from the car that had been parked overnight in front of an officer's house in Brookeville in June, including a police baton, two loaded .50 caliber Glock magazines and two sets of handcuffs, police said. Police found the M-4 rifle and a glove stolen from the car, but many stolen items remain missing.

Oversight and all. Can you imagine the madness that would follow if .50 caliber Glock magazines were discovered missing by one of the non-badged folk? And why does any cop neeeeeeed a handgun that's capable of shooting down an airliner flying at 30,000 feet at 550 mph with one shot?

Those cops must be serious about enforcing the law.

Can the media get any more disgusting?

I haven't commented on the shooting in Hartford, Connecticut because I saw little to write about, but after I half heartedly clicked a link at CNN on it, I was treated to a pathetically poo-drenched story about racism.

Was the douchebag discriminated against? Who was responsible? What does his mother think about all the racism? Are unions in Connecticut really racist, and did the douchebag file a formal complaint? Did I mention racism? Racism? Say it with me: rrrrrraaaaaaccccciiiiiiisssssssmmmmmm.

I got your message CNN. I understand.

This is what I think about that. I think that CNN could care less about passing factual information in any article that they produce; this is abundantly clear. The reason, I gather, is because since CNN is a corporation that strives to collect dollars from the public, they have to whore themselves out to get them, and that means publishing articles that get traction by pulling on people's emotions. Articles like the piece of shit I read this morning.

So here I am standing in the middle of the park pointing at this steaming turd: hey y'all, there's some shit here. So what's up with that? I didn't link to the article because I don't want anyone to step in it. That's about it.

As for the douchebag gunman, anyone who willingly takes people's life deserves no sympathy. They get no love. Outside of self defense anyways. That's how it's supposed to work. Whether there was racism or not is insignificant because normal human beings do not shoot one another over something so trivial. Reality says that the gunman committed a disgusting act because he felt that he was mistreated, or that he wasn't promoted fast enough, or perhaps because his panties were riding up that day. In the end, he was a disgusting man that should be shamed, not propped up on some pedestal of excuses.

Shame on you CNN for entertaining such a disgusting angle.

More stupidity on the Virginia restaurant carry

You absolutely have to check out this shamelessly biased video on the matter from NBC Washington.

That is no accident. In case you're wondering what the hell I'm talking about, the commercial at the beginning of the video is a cyber-stealing awareness video that has two masked men with rifles walking into a bank while firing on full auto.

Jackie Bensen is the reporter in the video, and whether or not this is her doing, she is still accountable.

She did give Jim Snyder of the VCDL a crack at his take on the law, which he helped push through. Still, there's just no covering up the bias.

I blame California's lax gun laws

SaysUncle noted that Big Box media is chanting the Virginia-lax-gun-laws-to-blame-for-this mantra over the shooting at the Pentagon.

Virginia, which has some of the most lax gun laws in the nation and has been pushing to expand gun rights, has been criticized lately by gun control advocates. The state’s General Assembly approved a bill last month allowing people to carry concealed weapons in bars and restaurants that serve alcohol, and the House of Delegates voted to end a 17-year-old measure barring people from buying more than one handgun a month.

Well well well. What have we here?

— A California man killed in a shootout with Pentagon police drove cross-country and arrived outside the military headquarters armed with two semiautomatic weapons, authorities said Friday.

What grade did the Brady Campaign just give California again?

Maybe it's time The New York Times got off its knees and stopped entertaining the gun control crowd.

A crack team of idiots discover what Americans already knew

Unbelievable!

CNN has discovered that Americans are. . . . get this folks. . . . pissed off at their government! Wow. I am truly shocked.

This whole time I thought that everyone was just tickled pink with the state of the union, and now an elite team of bumbling pollsters working for one of the most biased news organizations in the world has just ruined my world view.

You learn something new every day.

You spin me right round

Wow. Why the press is in some sort of spin mode on the UA shooting is the question of the day.

There is the typical stuff and fluff that we get with every spree killer, like that so-and-so was lonely, depressed, had just lost a whole litter of puppies to famine. There is the also the vain attempt at directing blame at gun laws, like here where AP writer Desiree Hunter notes that Bishop didn't have a permit to spree shoot at a staff meeting. At least that's how I read it. Do you have to have a permit to own a firearm in Alabama? Do you think that if you did, an educated woman like Bishop would be paused at all in finding a gun? What does it matter?

It doesn't. It's spin. There has to be spin, has to be, because Massachusetts dropped the ball at putting a violent sociopath behind bars, and we can't let government failure singe the brain cells of the public.

"C'mon guys, there has to be another direction, any direction, that we can take this thing! Dungeons and Dragons? Perfect! Have it on my desk in an hour!"

We find out in a snippet all the way at the bottom of this piece that Amy Bishop was an Obama loving loon. What does that have to do with anything?

Nothing really. It's just that the press skews the facts about every violent lunatic, to the point where the public now believes that a murderous neo-nazi really is right wing, instead of someone aligned with the national socialist movement. It's right wing all the time, baby. Always will be.

Unless it's not, then it will be something else - like Grand Theft Auto, Slayer, D&D, the NRA.

However, I'll tell you where this shooting has made an impact: Perception.

This Sunday, when you see me OCing my big ol' honkin' Kimber in line at Starbucks after getting out of my mud soaked 4 wheel drive, you can stow that negative attitude, sport. Instead, save your suspicion for the frumpy looking woman sipping at her latte who pulled up in a Prius with a 'I Want To Have Obama's Babies' bumper sticker on the back. Is that a sawed off under that hemp coat, or are you just happy to see me?

Update: You don't need a permit to own a firearm in Alabama, as noted over at Hell in a Handbasket. And I agree with James' logic that the media is just that clueless about firearm ownership, that they have to add that 'permit' qualifier to the story because it involves guns.

Wanted: the rest of the freakin story

Update at the bottom.

A Virginia man was arrested in New Jersey yesterday on weapons charges. The NBC 4 Washington article goes well out of its way to paint this in the most harrowing light possible, but something smells fishy; notably, the absence of any important details, and the overwhelming amount of journalistic accoutrements.

OK, so this guy is wearing body armor and runs from the cops, who then tackle him and find a rifle on him? Were these uniformed cops? If they were plain cloths, I can see how someone would run from them. How many cops have you met that would tackle a guy with a rifle? They had to have seen it on him. More likely they would surround him with weapons drawn, and then shoot him if he grabbed the rifle. These are New Jersey cops we're talking about, and the article says that the guy was acting suspicious, whatever that means these days.

The central part of the story is that the guy had a map of a military installation on him. Whoopty do. Perhaps he had an AAFES map, of even worse, a Google satellite image. I mean, this could mean just about anything; that he had an easily acquired map of a military base doesn't automatically make him Al-Qaeda, despite how desperate the media would like it to be so. If I turn out to be wrong, well, I've eaten plenty of crow in my day.

Next, we have positive confirmation that the onslaught of emails correcting news monkeys on the differences between semi-auto and full-auto weapons seems to be sinking in, but we still have some work to do with that childish "assault thingy" term that they sit around all day waiting to use. And apparently it now only takes two weapons to equal a "cache," or otherwise known as a "host" of weapons. One of these dreaded beasts is what's reported to be a M240 grenade launcher, but that can't be verified right now because a) it's being reported by a goon who works in a news organization that is using a picture of a M240 found on the internet, and b) because cops in New Jersey generally don't know the make and model of any firearm that is not issued to them.

Man arrested in possession of Winchester Model 70, and Ruger 10/22. What the cops report - "Man, I'm tellin' youse right now that this is the same gun used in dat movie Eraser!"

How the news reports it - "Cops tonight report that they caught a dangerous, sex offending, transvestite "teabagger" with a massively large cache of what appears to be two of those R2D2 lazer thingies used in the movie Under Siege 2. Here's Tom with the weather."

Also of interest, our esteemed bad guy had "high power ammunition," which probably means WWB ammo from Wal-Mart. Let's hope he didn't have any of that super deadly Extreme Shock ammo, because things could have really gotten out of hand. Note that he was charged with having "armor penetrating bullets," which I'm guessing that in NJ means that it was ball ammo, but I could be wrong. It really doesn't matter, as any .223 Remington ammunition, or centerfire rifle cartridges for that matter, can penetrate a bullet resistant vest. That's a fact.

The only thing that points to him being a possible scumbag is the defaced serial number. I'm sure that there's still more to that than meets the eye.

Again, he may turn out to be a bona fide scumbag, but I'm just not seeing it. That cops in general, and reporters specifically, don't know jack about what type of firearm is which, and adding the fact that both parties are well known for pouring on USDA Grade A+ awesomesauce onto anything they do, I have to have doubt. When there is a documented effort to accurately report the facts as they really are, then I will start to give merit to stories like this.

I'll post more on this if I can get it.

Update: The FBI is saying that the guy is not a terrorist. The press goes into full blown BS mode and is saying the guy had an anti-tank rifle because it was chambered in .50 caliber - meaning it was chambered in the .50 Beowulf cartridge from Alexander Arms. The other rifle is a 308, and the grenade launcher is a Cobray 37mm, which to my knowledge only launches flares. So much for that. Also, tremble in your boots knowing that this guy had a "middle eastern head scarf." Hopefully the cops don't find any more of his deadly stash.

Deliberate misinformation

Here is a screen shot of a CNN page from this morning, with the highlighted link in question:


And here is the ABC News article under the link. That's bias that is about as deliberate as it can be. It can't be blamed on lack of knowledge, or that it was just missed. So it is a lie.

I can't let stuff like this go.