I know right where she can start -- prosecuting an armed gang who brokered the sale of illegally purchased firearms for violent drug cartels who used those weapons to kill innocent people. ZING!!!
Oh, wait. . . .
Recently, State Attorney General Eric Schneidermann announced that his office plans to crackdown on illegal gun distribution in the state. In fact, a probe conducted by his office revealed that many gun sellers disregard state mandated background checks, according to the Associated Press.
Ohhhhhhhhh. You mean she's backing a STATE law that would make the process of buying and selling firearms in New York even more illegal and convoluted. . . . I read you now. For a minute there I thought a member of congress actually gave a shit about preventing violent people from using firearms to commit violent crimes. My bad. I see now that state commerce has captured the interest of Rep. Gillibrand (I thought she was pro-gun? David Codrea was right about her, you know).
Well, you can't blame a snake for biting any more than you can blame a revenuer for revenuin'.
Since I'm knuckle deep in this article now, I guess I should let the mocking begin. I did find this amusing:
An individual gun seller can is legally accountable for the guns they sell, but not a gun show operator.
What's a "gun seller can?" Is that like a can of man that sells guns? I'm imagining now a secret factory run by the NRA that packages men who sell firearms into little cans in order to execute an eeeeeevil covert plot to saturate the country with individual gun sellers. The logistics of it is genius -- a pickup truck can only handle perhaps a half dozen individual gun sellers in the bed; I can't even fathom how many cans of men will fit back there. Hundreds maybe? Thousands?
And "gun show operators?" I admit to seeing one or two of those guys at every gun show I've ever been to -- they're the ones wearing old camo, and decked out in cheap nylon holsters and vests with too many pockets, handing out High Points to kids like candy. They're easy to spot, with all those patches and urine stains on their uniforms, and more than a little creepy. I had no idea they were exempt from state laws! That's totally backwards! Rep. Gillibrand is absolutely right: Gun Show Special Warfare Operators should be accountable for the guns they sell, but not canned men who sell guns. They're in a can, so they can't do much harm. Besides, how many guns will fit in a can?
Just when you though it was over, there's more:
The proposed legislation toughens penalties for illegal gun sales. Traffickers could face nearly 20 years in prisons.
Holy shit! Not *A* prison; we're talking multiple prisons! From what I'm reading here, if a gun trafficker gets caught, the court could have him torn to pieces and sent to prisons all over the state! Maybe they'll put his head on a pike in one prison, and gibbet his bloody torso in another. That's a bit morbid, but it would surely do more for placing fear in illegal gun traffickers than a bill that targets basically anyone not perfectly rehersed in the law.
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.
"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.
The article is completely void of hysterical anti-gunners warning about blood in the streets this weekend, but it does turn out this little gem:
Those who attend the convention will find the latest styles and types of weapons on the market, but they will not be able to stroll out of the Downtown convention center with a newly purchased automatic weapon, Parsons said.
"If someone is interested in an AR-15, they can go to the manufacturer, check it out, hold it, look through the scope and get recommendations for a retailer where they live who can sell them that product, but they aren't going to buy it that day and go home with it," Parsons said.
Ms. Greenwood of the PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW, like other media yahoos, doesn't know that an AR15 is not an automatic weapon. I know it just blows the mind that such a mistake made it past the tight editing we enjoy in the media these days. Weird.
The story is titled "Packing Heat in the Pews," like citizens have a Star Wars lunchbox full of handwarmers with them when they go to church. How about a title that isn't despicable for once? Sure, "Citizens Request Clarification Of Equivocal State Code In Order To Not Be Fined/Ostracized While They Peacefully Assemble To Worship While Withholding The Means Of Self Defense" probably won't fit too well in the headline, but come on. You media types can at least show a little bit of neutrality every now and then. I swear, it's like you're walking around with you balls showing, and everyone can see them but you do nothing about it, wandering around with a huge smile on your face.
Anyways, Jim Snyder of the Virginia Citizens Defense League was interviewed, and I guess his clip got past editing because he didn't get his gun rights on. He chose instead to point out the obvious, that really nice Virginians want a silly statute clarified. That's why he gets paid the big bucks.
Also, the two people interviewed saw Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli's (my buddy Ken!) legal opinion as a good one. Of course, interviewing a huge white guy with a shaved head and long goatee in front of a Wal-Mart in Deliverence county, Virginia was bound to yield an opinion favorable to gun rights, so maybe the reporter wasn't so biased. I swear though you could here him curse under his breath when the nice looking woman said that she understood why people wanted to be armed in church; you have to take the bitter with the sweet. The opposition came in the form of a pastor at some church where, presumably, there had been several armed madmen hell bent on mayhem that were stopped cold at the door because they feared incurring a fine for having a firearm during the murder they were about to commit. So I can see his point about churches being places of safety and refuge.
So now churches are "talking" about whether or not to allow their flock to have a few sheepdogs within their doors. Good. If they have a problem with it, then they can clearly post their doors and let everyone know what the deal is. I find gun owners in general to sometimes wield their purse at issues that affect their rights; and from what I'm hearing about ATMs and credit card services in church to keep those notes out of default, the pastors might want to consider not cutting out some of their most loyal base. They may also want to consider that having half a dozen sheepdogs in the congregation would prove worthwile if a random madman got past the lunatic forcefield that protects the church and storms in with a shotgun.
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.
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?
This week in Washington, Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey introduced three very modest gun regulation bills, including one making it more difficult to sell guns to people on the terror watch list.
Jeez, I would hate to see what you consider a radical proposal. Oh yeah, this:
Meanwhile, in Salt Lake City, the State Legislature is considering a bill to honor the Browning M1911 pistol by making it the official state firearm.
Gail Collins considers a law that impacts no one in any substantive way at all an absurd idea, yet thinks that a law that would impact Americans for years to come is modest. Pretty backwards if you ask me, but then again, I'm talking about a woman who is confused about the meaning of the word "terror:"
The terror of the National Rifle Association is so pervasive that President Obama did not want to poison the mood of his State of the Union address by suggesting that when somebody on the terror watch list tries to buy a gun, maybe we should do an extra check.
So a group of people who advocate the peaceable ownership of arms are terror[ists]? That puts a qualifier on exactly who she believes should be on a secret government list, no? I guess this prophetic understanding that she has in that branding non-violent people with a dark label and forever restricting or taking away their rights is "extremely mild," while ensuring a dead man who designed a bad-ass nine shot pistol is honored in his state is radical somehow leads us to want to send her nice comments on her shit article telling her about how smart she is.
The rest of the article is disgusting, and one can see right away how partisan she is.
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.
"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!
"Baltimore can be a safer city, and with the help of the Maryland General Assembly, we can pass tougher penalties on illegal gun possession and we can continue to reducing gun violence to historic lows," said Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.
And who wouldn't want to reduce illegal gun possession, right? Wait though, what exactly is her definition of illegal gun possession?
She doesn't enlighten us on that, but her proposal gives you an indication:
The bills the mayor will push are for up to 15 years in prison for felons in possession of a gun and a mandatory 18 months in prison for anyone carrying an illegal and loaded weapon.
Let's break it down: Felons in possession of a gun. The Mayor starts off right out of the gate about repeat gun offenders who are dangerous bad guys, and that is what she would lead you to believe she is after, but she is not suggesting 15 years for a violent gun offense; she is saying that possession of a gun contrary to written code is grounds for 15 years off your life, regardless of intent. If an individual served a two year sentence forty years ago for possession of marijuana, that individual can get a 15 year sentence if they live in a residence with someone who owns a Marlin .22 rifle. Same individual in a car pool van that gets pulled over, and one of the passengers has a legal .25 auto in their pocket: does that count as a "felon in possession of a gun?" I would bet that it does.
Now, to the issue of anyone carrying an illegal and loaded weapon: carrying an unloaded weapon is useless unless you are carrying it to the range, and again, I've never seen that qualified. Usually laws are written in an attempt to cover the person who sticks their unloaded gun in the trunk of the car and goes to the shooting range, but even that gets hemmed up as in the case of Brian Aitken. And if you make guns as illegal as possible for anyone to own, you end up with a handy tool to make anyone a criminal. So really the law is aimed at anyone who has a gun and ammunition on or about their person, and there's a lot of grey in their for the legal minions to work with.
But what about the dangerous criminals who repeatedly get caught using a gun in the commission of a violent felony? How do we ensure that they go to prison for a long long time? If you have to ask that question to somebody, you're a retard. I mean that.
Fisking this tired mantra about strengthening gun laws as a means to put criminals behind bars is getting old. It has nothing at all to do with the criminals and everything to do with control of the general population, as they are the ones who are most likely to get hung up in this mess, and there are money making ventures in that.
If a violent scumbag repeatedly gets caught hurting people, then you already have the Nature and Cause to lock them up for eternity. A gun law is an inappropriate and unnecessary tool to that end. If there are gangbangers who won't stop shooting up the streets of Baltimore, than the next time you catch them committing a violent act, that is your chance to keep them out of society by using the laws against hurting people that have existed since Exodus. It ain't any harder than that.
So this whole "we can't stop them unless you pass this law" is a bunch of bullshit that needs to be called out.
"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."
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.
"Armed man at Mormon temple killed in Utah shootout"
That's how the title reads, and from what little information there is in the story, it sounds like a good shoot by the police. The problem here is the use of the word "shootout."
Let's consult Dictionary.com: shoot-out [shoot-out] –noun 1. a gunfight that must end in defeat for one side or the other, as between gunfighters in the Old West, criminal groups, or law-enforcement officers and criminals.
Discarding the rest about military skirmishes, hockey, and soccer, I note the requisite word "gunfight." Let's look at that: gun-fight [guhn-fahyt] –noun a battle between two or more people or groups armed with guns, esp. a confrontation between two gunfighters using revolvers in the frontier days of the American West.
So there has to be more than one person, and the parties involved battle with one another using arms of some sort, especially revolvers, and there has to be defeat by at least one party.
Reading through the story, I find no battle between two or more parties using firearms. Everybody involved were armed, one guy got shot by another guy, so I guess that constitutes defeat, but there was no shootout. I guess "somebody got shot" isn't an exciting enough headline for a worthless article. For your edification, this tragic story is about a real gunfight.
There's not really a lot going on out there in the news world, so I thought I would hammer on some no-name journalist at a small time news page over something petty. Good morning to you too.
In this article, both the shooter and the shootee were proud "active" members of DC's Youth Rehabilitation Services, and it's apparent from the author that DYRS did not send thems two keeeiiids away to someplace exotic for a long enough period of time. If only Mr. Kearney had been sent to purgatory in Carlsbad to sip margaritas and think about how eluding and assaulting police officers is frowned upon in today's society, maybe he would not have shot another human being to death over something so petty as a bag of meth, or whatever the dispute was.
Do note that twice Kearney was sentenced for some crime amongst a stack of crimes, and that had he actually served the time he was supposed to, he could not have possibly killed Wilson as he would have been behind bars. So really, what is the failure point here? These guys were both allowed to walk the streets on their own free will as long as they reported occasionally to DYRS, instead of serving the time that they were sentenced to. Hmmmm.
It's obvious to me that the solution to young people who repetitively demonstrate dangerous criminal behavior is not to stroke their feelings and give them a pompous vacation, but to place them in a facility that separates them from the people who are not lunatics. This facility should have high walls and fences, topped with concertina wire and towers filled with men with rifles.
It's a revelation, I tell ya! You heard it here first!
"Department puts teens at risk on D.C. mean streets"
Uuuuhm, no. That is the subtitle to this article in the Washington Times on how screwed up teens and young adults buy/sell/do drugs and murder one another. I'm sorry, but you cannot blame government for the actions of crazy people.
That agency, despite all its problems, did all that it could to show this man - 19 year old individual: man - that there was life outside of DC ghettos, and sent him to a wonderful neighborhood out of state for two frickin' years to figure himself out. I don't see the connection here on how a DC government agency is destroying lives; if you are 19 years old, you are responsible for getting a hold of yourself and making your way through life without selling crack and ambushing armed drug dealers in seedy alleys.
Yeah, government agencies countrywide are not known as being bastions of efficiency or sensibility, but it seems that this particular agency did this scumbag a solid by sending him to a lovely academy so that he could play sports without being shot at. What the author, Mr. Anderson, is suggesting is that the agency condemned this man to die because they didn't finance his vacation permanently, and instead released him "arbitrar[ily]" on his own recognizance to make adult choices and do his own thing. That his own thing consisted of selling drugs and running from the cops is nobody's fault but his own.
Check this out:
Older teenagers pose the most significant challenges, he added, because group homes won't take them and they cannot be forced to go to school. "They age out," he said. "It's a programming failure. If we miss the opportunity to connect with them when they are 15 or younger, it's harder to get through to them later."
Get that? They "age out," which seems to me to be the point where they are supposed to transition from being a juvenile to an adult, but is suggested here as being the point where government doesn't grab ahold of both of their hands and make them not kill people. And that transition stage of adulthood is no longer a natural stage, it's a "programming failure." Someone needs to tell the Lord to stop screwing these kids up with all these awkward stages and stuff.
To recap, Chicquelo's mother, who allegedly gave birth to him before she reached the programming failure stage, has lived in a dangerous ghetto in DC for probably her whole life, and has no responsibility whatsoever from the author's perspective in her son growing up a violent, wannabe, drug dealing gangster, and a never heard of DC agency is to blame for not financing a fantasy life for an adult with a long criminal history. I'm starting to put it all together now.
See, DC should be like one great big-ass game of The Sims, with some responsible individual constantly overseeing someone of questionable scruples. Who cares how that's gonna be paid for; we're talking about making people make better choices, like choosing to go to Lowes and apply for a job instead of shooting heroin and smoking cigarettes on the porch all day. Common sense stuff.
Think about how 24/7 oversight could have prevented this scenario:
The police affidavit states the bullet that killed Chicquelo was fired in self-defense, and the youth who fired the shot, who had charges pending against him and was under a court warning against possessing a gun, was not charged.
Maybe if the scumbag who killed Chicquelo in unlawful self defense had simply been placed in a beautiful town in Wisconsin for his prior felonious acts, for several years, he would have a scholarship to Yale instead of a ticket to prison. Let's not worry our pretty little heads over the court putting a warning out against him for being an armed scumbag instead of locking him up for being a threat to society; all of these choir boys are victims, can't you see? We can't be locking up victims!
Yikes. It's apparent that Mr. Anderson believes in glad handing scumbags, instead of placing them behind bars. I say give them one chance and one chance only to not be a heathen, and then slam them in prison for the rest of their lives if they decide to keep hurting people.
Members of 30 Commando Command Support Group (CSG) from Royal Marines 3 Commando Brigade fire the 50mm calibre weapon on the The Defence Training Estate (DTE) ranges at Lulworth, in Dorset.
Some scumbag is wandering around Virginia firing rounds at the Marine Corps Museum, the Pentagon, and now a Marine Corps recruiting center. In a bout of irony, the Marine Corps Museum and the Pentagon are Gun Free Zones.
The question remains though of how this miscreant makes his or her way around Northern Virginia while shooting up buildings with impunity. The answer is here:
The civilian Pentagon Force Protection Agency's director, Steven Calvery, said last week that the Pentagon shooting appeared to be "a random event" involving a high-velocity rifle.
The scumbag in question is not a scumbag at all, but a rifle that moves about very quickly on its own will. Some rifles have been known to move quicker than others, as you may know. A good rule of thumb is that if you read about one of these precocious rifles in the news for committing a naughty act, than it's sure to be one of the high-velocity types; the low-velocity rifles have better control over their actions, and do not lash out at Marines.
All of mine are low-velocity rifles, as I have had them spayed so that they stay exactly where I put them, and do not move about freely under their own power. If you have not properly spayed your assault thingy, you may want to think about contacting your nearest gunsmith without delay. Think of the lawsuit that you would have on your hands if one of your precious rifles got out of the safe one night and started moving at high-velocity, shooting at buildings and such.
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.
I almost laughed oatmeal out of my nose when I read this headline! So much can be deducted from that one statement depending on who you are and how you think.
Personally, I have no dog in the DC Mayor fight; I think they have both shown to not care very much about the rights of their constituents.
"But if we had to make that call on a close margin, I do believe a majority of District residents say: 'Give us the vote. Give us the vote, and we hate this gun law, but we'll find a way to get rid of that if necessary.' "
Where a candidate stands on a simple human right tells a big tale about how they will treat you as a person. Both fail under my standards, but then I don't have to live by their rules. I can safely stand back and mock whichever one wins from the relative safety of my keyboard. Either way, I wish DC folks well. It's like having to decide between cat shit or dog shit for dinner.
Update: To the below post, in comments Boomhauer notes that DC police are in official uniform when working security, so that indicates that the hoodlum would be the one who flew off the handle. Perhaps he had been sniffing the Gorilla Glue for too long, and thought he could take on the world!
Today's dose of stupid and quote of the day, all rolled into one:
kj85756 Guns are dangerous. The civilian should have called the police and let them take care of it. Guns are not needed when you have a cell phone.
This is a comment in response to this article which lays out very little detail about an upstanding armed citizen in DC who saw a crime being committed and intervened. As you can guess, the citizen was an off duty cop, and as usual, his firearm un-assed from his holster and discharged, all on its own.
Some facts here:
The off duty cop works part time at the Home Despot where this all went down.
The cop was carrying his "service revolver", as the news person in the video knows firearms very well, and has made that determination with all the accuracy and oversight that we have come to expect from the media.
The Service Revolver has full control of itself, and can discharge at will.
Bite wounds and a grazing gun shot wound warrant a high speed ambulance ride to the hospital, complete with two police cruisers in tow, for everybody, not just cops. Honest.
Guns are baaaa-ah-ah-ah-ah-d.
Cellphones stop violence.
Now, the article says our off duty hero witnessed a crime being committed, confronted the dangerous threat, and a fight ensued whereas the violent hoodlum showed how completely reckless he was by grabbing the issued Service Revolver which then in protest decided to discharge without any such human interaction. The video has some cop-like official stating matter of factly that the Home Despot employees, who we presume were unarmed considering that they work in DC, saw the alleged hoodlum committing NoGood and confronted him at the front of the store, wherein the off duty cop comes strolling by and the employees ask him to intervene in a more authoritative capacity. Either way the off duty cop assumed his role as a cop and took action, which means that the above quoted moronic commenter has failed to notice that the "civilian" did in fact summon the police; he just happened to summon himself.
The question that remains unasked is whether the off duty hero cop identified himself as a police officer, or whether he tried to use armed color of law while clad only in an orange apron. If he chose the latter, and displayed a Revolver that we all know the DC police still issue to cops for Service, than the hoodlum may have assumed he was an armed antagonizer. If he chose the former, than did he display the required amount of credentials to show without a doubt that he was a cop, and not just some random un-blessed guy with a gun who works at Home Despot?
The article does say that the off duty cop had just arrived at Home Despot to "work security," which leads to more questions such as: was he wearing the beautiful blue uniform that security guards wear to identify them as being there for the purpose of making something secure? Was he openly wearing the big ol' honkin' Revolver issued by DC for Service, making it easily identifiable as a Service Revolver for the purposes of making the store secure? Who initiated the physical altercation which led to a Revolver having to discharge? Was the hoodlum acting as a patron who was scared of a big scary armed man, or was he acting as a violent scumbag who hates the coppers and won't be taken alive? Why the hell does Home Despot need an armed security guard?
The hoodlum may indeed be a violent scumbag for all I know, but I have to question whether he would risk fighting with multiple people in the front of the store, one of them who probably stated that he was a cop and who is at least potentially armed, all to make off with a booty of gas cans and Gorilla Glue. But then again, this is a Home Despot that though it prudent to hire a cop to be an armed security guard, so there is potential for the area to be saturated with people who would gladly kill for some brushed aluminum door knobs.
Also, if cellphones are all that's needed to stop criminals in their tracks, than why don't cops carry them in their holsters instead of dangerous Service Revolvers? You know, the more news articles I read, the more questions I have. You would think that journalists would be trained to provide facts, and not make a big mess of things.
Why is it that the press is still casting stones at former president Bush? That guy gets no quarter from me, but that doesn't mean that I sit around all day pondering up ways to blame him for stuff.
The latest example is from NBC News contributor Sasha Perl-raver with her short piece on the film "The Tillman Story," which is just a bunch of nonsense about how "war is hell", but was actually much worse because of Bush. One person can make bad worse, you see.
So admittedly "war is hell", and Corporal Tillman was a Ranger in Afghanistan shooting a machine gun at some bad guys, was killed by his own buddies in the fog of war, and then everybody and their brother had a hand in botching the details and somehow this means that Bush sucks? I'm confused.
Bush sucked for a variety of reasons, the least of which is like eight dozen human beings getting the details of an elite Soldier's death wrong for whatever excuse. The events proceeding the death of Corporal Tillman sound an awfully lot like the game of telephone in grade school, where a teacher demonstrates how the human factor can completely skew a message when it's passed down through so many people. The point of that demonstration is that the less human involved in transmission of a message, the less skewed it will usually be; in the case of Corporal Tillman, the message had to pass through a ton of human. This is the Army we're talking about.
Media types are fascinated with conspiracy theories stemming from some Republican tool. I like conspiracy theories too, I just don't make it my mission in life to continuously smear someone over them because I have nothing better to do than hate on the opposite party. Daggone, grow up would you!
