Guns Of Christmas Future
Clearly, there's a lot of anger in America right now.
Much of it justified, as some can afford shower curtain rings that would dwarf others' weekly wages (and the latter are the ones who are lucky enough to have jobs). When you take this fact, combine it with the Orwellian "Newspeak" so pervasive in our media (which David Neiwert has written so articulately about), and multiply that by the NRA's mission to fight for the rights of criminals, the mentally ill and even terrorists to have access to guns, you have a toxic stew, ready to erupt.
Scene: Panama City, Florida. A school board meeting is interrupted by a man with a criminal record of assault (with a gun) waving a gun, and furious that his wife lost her job, his benefits have run out and the board members were unwilling to raise sales taxes so she and others like her wouldn't be fired (it should be noted that reports are still sketchy, so not all of what he says about his wife and himself during the 5 minutes when the board members try and talk him down can be confirmed yet).
We don't yet know where he got his gun -- but we do know his criminal record and history of mental illness made it illegal for him obtain a gun of any kind. We also know that you can walk into a gun show in many states, such as Virginia, and buy any weapon, no background check necessary. The Governor of Virginia thinks that this is a-ok. No matter that everyone from members of Hezbollah to the Columbine killers to the Pentagon shooter got their guns in this manner.
Apparently, to make an omelette, you have to shoot a few eggs.
But the gun lobby marches on: Much harm, no foul.
The NRA has spent years trying to destroy and delegitimize the ATF, such that nobody has been leading this important law enforcement agency for the past 4 years. Why? Because they try and track where guns come from when they kill people. Crazy. right?
And of course we know that we are creating our very own Bonus Army, as millions are filled with despair and anxiety as we give them a pittance while extending tax cuts for people who make Richie Rich look like Oliver Twist.
So is this our future? Videos of killers wielding illegal guns and holding innocent people hostage -- or worse. Reality TV, gone very, very wrong.
Unless/until we decide that gun safety, economic equality, and preventing pundits from inciting riot/slandering whole groups of people on air are reforms worth fighting for. Stay tuned on this one. In the meantime, sadly, I can promise you one thing: Many mini-revolutions such as this will be televised. And it will be ugly.
when told he must wait 5 days for the record check complained, "But I'm angry NOW!"
"Someday somebody related to some of these sufferers, these victims, these collaterally damaged souls, may try to kill you. And I have to tell you, I think you’ll have it coming." - Christopher Cooper
There's a difference between anger and mental illness. Clearly this guy was mentally unstable.
As usual, the Right is using this as a reason why everyone should have the right to carry even though, as the video shows, the guy was only a few feet away and his shots went all over the place. Image if everyone pulled out a gun and started firing. Bloodbath.
I don't think you need a background check in Texas either.
And we seem to constantly have gun shows with billboards along the highway saying,
"Celebrate the Season of Peace, with a Glock."
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
There's no possibility of armed insurrection in America, since for every conspiracy involving two people, one of them will be FBI. (Any 'civil war' will have to be a military coup.) But Americans are very good at the lone nut shooting! Perhaps the NRA will eventually back down and allow laws that require sanity checks before you can take an aiming class or practice at a range.
Where's the video from Predator of Hawkins saying, "We hit nothing!"
Then I'll just use the range in my kitchen.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
I know that guy was kind of a nut, but this is the exact thing I predicted would happen.
I hope we do see more of it (and I hope I am not the one caught in the crossfire). But when you see these maniacal Tea Baggers who insist on cutting EVERYTHING related to government you do want to really cheer these nuts on. In many ways who can blame them.
I am so glad you justified everything I have been saying. Our budget crisis could be solved so easily if EVERYONE (including the billionaires) would just sacrifice a little. But to say "no compromise" when everyone else has to lose their job will lead to more of this.
Hell, I would be willing to make a one time payment of $3000 to make our debt problem go away. (Since supposedly this is the share that every man woman and child owes to China.) But ask one of these billionaires to sacrifice ONE PENNY and they go berserk.
and your hope that we all see more of this I think it less likely that you will caught in the crossfire than you are to be holding innocent people at gunpoint.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
I don't even own a gun and never plan to. Haven't you ever heard of sarcasm? Just saying. Every country has psychos. But our psychos seem to go off in response to the insane Tea Bagger/Ayn Rand Social Darwinist rhetoric. which is actually taken seriusly in this country by a lot of people who would never know how to invent a light bulb if it weren't invented already. I think these policies exacerbate mental illness and encourage them to go out and do these things.
who failed to see the snark in someone's post but I still have to say I see nothing desirable in this happening more often.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
Hate to tell these baggers I told you so, but I told you so.
PS, you may want to stay away from a Walmart this holiday season. Some angry nut who feels his job has been oursourced could easily go nuts in there. If this doesn't help the Boycott Everything cause, nothing will.
manufacturers.
They've brillaintly wrapped themselves in the 2nd Amendment, patriotism and American exceptionalism.
Soon, they'll be demanding that guns be implanted into the hands of a fetus in the womb, just in case Mom decides to have an abortion. Because that would eliminate another potential gun buyer.
This country has gone mad. And we all have front row seats to this movie: "The Cataclysmic Fall of an Empire." Enjoy the popcorn and the roof over your head as long as you can.
Ah, I love the smell of hyperbole in the morning.
The guy in Florida who opened fire at a school board meeting was bipolar and an ex-con. Both of those facts made his merely holding a firearm a federal crime, punishable by ten years in prison.
Second, the "the NRA is working so that terrorists can buy guns" line is a load of hooey. The issue is whether or not anyone on the Federal "no-fly" list would be banned from purchasing a gun. Given that the no-fly list is secretive, with no right to appeal the determination (much less to find what the basis is), and that even Ted Kennedy was on the list for awhile, well, one would think that the very concept that a faceless government bureaucrat can secretly decide who gets to exercise a denominated civil right is, well, astonishing.
Would you be OK with the idea that anyone on the no-fly list also gives up their rights under the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th and 8th amendments? I would remind you that people who protested the Chimperor's wars wound up on the no-fly list.
http://epic.org/privacy/firearms/
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
The NRA is not specifically working to put guns in the hands of terrorists. Their aims are really much more general. They want no impediments to exist that prevent an individual from acquiring a weapon regardless of whether or not they are mentally ill, a violent criminal or even just a terrorist. They nobly maintain that no one should be denied the privilege of gun ownership until after the slaughter. And maybe not even then.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
By the way,
I have an awesome idea for those budding entrepeneurs, who are out of work in the US, and practically bankrupt.
Step 1: Take out a loan, or actually, several loans, as many as you can.
Step 2: Purchase guns for all the money
Step 3: File for bankruptcy when loans/interest is due.
Step 4: Utilize the new law saying that your guns cannot be taken away when they come for your property to settle your debts, due to the new law passed by overwhelming support recently, initiated by republicans.
Step 5: Sell your guns after the bankruptcy, and cash in to make a net profit and have a nice nest egg for yourself.
And you guys claim republicans never think of anything that helps you.
/snark
long barrel at minimum to protect yourself from home invaders desperate to get a bag of Doritos in their stomachs and brushing up on your wingnut speak and acting skills when the Camo crowd comes knocking looking for any God Damn Libruls that might be in da area.
Libruls? I saw a bunch of em' running down yonder. A couple of dem God hating un's they was. Driving one of dem' pissurouses. Just down thataway!
Every gawd-damned one of you secretly wish he'd have gone after someone else.
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
aside from the 2nd amendment debate, as more guns--legally and illegally--enter into our communities officials might want to consider employing metal detectors for public meetings....
Typical knee jerk reaction. Instead of dealing with the hard issue of why this guy wasn't getting the help he needs, or, dealing with the economic issues that drive people over the edge, blame the gun. This guy could just as easily been armed with a bomb, knife or can of gasoline and a match. But hey it's easy to ban something not so easy to actually fix the problems our society faces.
Handguns were created with the express purpose to harm humans. Knives, gasoline and the elements that go into making bombs? Not so much.
Don't try to confuse the issue with half-truths and gorilla dust.
I'm sure it is a very nice gun and, if given the choice, would rather have been elsewhere. This post is more about a system that lets mentally ill and violent people have ridiculously easy access to guns.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
...from yesterday on a guy named Jim Pasco title- Police union lobbyist has influence in gun debate, beyond
two thoughts sneak into my head
the first is: wow, we live in a society where just about anyone can buy a gun but two people who love one another cannot marry if they are of the same sex
the second is: imagine if this was what daily life was like, being intimidated at gunpoint by scary men with guns . . . like in iraq and afghanistan and palestine
and in this case, i have a third thought: who is the gal in white who hit the guy with her purse? i'd like to buy her a drink
Cliff, we don't know the facts about how this guy got his gun, or whether any realistic gun control could have prevented him getting it (most likely not, since by definition, criminals don't follow the rules). Don't you think you should get the facts first ?
Don't you understand that the gun issue is TOXIC at the ballot ? That red states will never support gun control ? That Al Gore couldn't even win in his home state of Tennessee because of the gun issue.
Don't you understand that gun control has never been proven to reduce violence ? Everywhere it has been tried in the US, it has been a failure, only serving to drive legitimate gun owners like me into the arms of the Republican party.
As a gun owning liberal, I'm turned off by this kind of post. Don't we as a country have more important issues to address, like health care, jobs, peace, and sustainable energy ?
you might ask them: why does your desire for liberty only apply to gun ownership, and not to same sex marriage or the privacy of citizens' phone calls and e-mails or traveling without a junk inspection or smoking/growing marijuana?
if your gun is more important to you than just about every other social issue or right, please don't blame the anti-gun folks . . . you ARE a republican
So was slavery for about four score and four years, but as TOXIC as abolitionism was, it was right.
Sure....Because for every attempt to regulate the sale and/or possession of guns by the government of one city or state, there has been a lack of regulation in another state that facilitates the illegal spread of firearms into the former. Pay attention to the part of the Second Amendment that precedes the comma:
A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
If this is the issue that drives liberals like you to the GOP, then I have to question the depth of your commitment to liberalism.
Oh, sweet baby Jebus....C&L posts ~15 blog entries every day, and one post like this every six months makes you think that the site has lost focus? See above: Commitment, depth of.
Don't try to confuse the issue with half-truths and gorilla dust.
to convince the gun lobby that the gunshow loophole must be eliminated? I don't own guns myself, but have absolutely no problem with anybody else having them so long as they are trained in gun safety and pass a simple background check. Hell, if anyone wants to come over and knock off the deer that infest my woods, I'll donate a case of good bourbon.
that a major gun dealer in Houston was found to have sold thousands of weapons that ended up in Mexico where 28,000 people have died in drug war violence. The NRA (No Rational American) is opposing a law that would cut down on the amount of exports.
... you'd find that your idea won't work.
It always amazes me that there are so many of my fellow liberals who routinely state that the government is in the thrall of corporate interests and that the police exist more to maintain that control than for any other purpose. They'll point out that the cops have a long track record of infiltrating liberal protest groups and acting as agent provocateurs.
But then they'll advocate total disarmament of the civilian population.
It makes zero sense to me.
hear!
I have a handgun that was designed deer hunting. I have one that was designed for target shooting.
And I have one that was designed for use in defending my life and my home.
I hate to burst your bubble, Andy, but I have used a handgun to defend myself. It was not necessary to fire it, as the very nice young man who was trying to break into my home all of a sudden remembered that he had urgent business elsewhere when I pointed a large revolver at him.
The man that tried to talk the gunman down was heroic, particularly when compared to the other people that beat feet without a look back.
The woman that clipped the gunman from behind had seen too many Rambo movies.
Was anyone killed?
How would things have been different if one or more of the board members had been armed, and knew how to shoot.
Why didn't the security officer shoot the SOB?
If you watch the video of the incident, you can see the knucklehead go down after he's hit. No one else was injured.
The security people that I saw interviewed concurred with your opinion of the purse-wielding woman, though. She's damned lucky to be alive.
woodguy
This video is cut off before the guy is shot, but he does go down before he kills himself.
woodguy
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