Lots of people don't like guns, but crime rates have fallen even as guns have become far more plentiful. And with even gun-ban champion Senator Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., admitting that her assault-weapon ban wouldn't have prevented the Newtown shootings, the ostensible justification for passing new gun control, the opposition to private gun ownership looks more and more like traditional anti-gay sentiment: not a reason-based policy, but something growing out of prejudice.
First, note the little rhetorical trick at the top -- comparing generic "crime rates" to the proliferation of guns, instead of gun deaths. And both the AMA and Richard Florida took a look at the data and concluded that states with more gun regulations have fewer gun deaths. How about that for a "reasoned-based policy"?
And note how Reynolds conflates favoring sensible gun regulations with "opposition to private gun ownership." Guess that makes the 88% of Americans who favor background checks irrational, bigoted gun grabbers.
Quick quiz. On January 2011, just two days after Jared Loughner killed six people and wounded 14 -- including US Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords -- with a Glock semiautomatic, Putz took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to:
a) argue for bans on semiautomatic guns
b) propose measures that would prevent mentally ill individuals from acquiring firearms
c) call for greater security for members of Congress
d) complain that Democrats were saying mean things about Sarah Palin and the GOP
Well, he's at it again -- this time in USA TODAY. And in the wake of this shooting spree -- a massacre which took the lives of 20 children -- Putz is mostly outraged that "liberals" are saying mean things about the NRA.
Is Hate A Liberal Value? A 20-year-old lunatic stole some guns and killed people. Who's to blame? According to a lot of our supposedly rational and tolerant opinion leaders, it's . . . the NRA, a civil-rights organization whose only crime was to oppose laws banning guns. (Ironically, it wasn't even successful in Connecticut, which has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation.)...Calling people murderers and wishing them to be shot sits oddly with claims to be against violence. The NRA -- like the ACLU, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers or Planned Parenthood -- exists to advocate policies its members want. It's free speech. The group-hate directed at the NRA is ugly and says ugly things about those consumed by it.
What's funnier here? Calling the NRA a "civil-rights organization" or comparing it to Planned Parenthood? I mean, one of those groups makes millions lobbying and shilling for gun companies and the other is a non-profit that provides affordable health services for women. See? Same thing!
Also hilarious: Putz writes that "Things Aren't Really That Bad" while simultaneously arguing that we need armed guards in every elementary school in the United States.
Frankly, I'm a little surprised it took wingers quite so long to dust off the "shooter's probably a leftist trying to make gun owners look bad" take. Yet another sign that they're just off their games since losing to the black guy again.
Then again, Bob "Confederate Yankee" Owens (who also writes for a gun porn site called Shooting Illustrated) has never been the sharpest tool in the shed.
And notice: one of the RTs below is by Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds, who is -- in the wake of the black guy winning again and the Newtown shooting -- growing more and more unhinged by the second.
Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds, who before calling the president a "racist hatemonger" used to get the occasional op-ed gig in the New York Times, now is relegated to right-wing rags like the Post.
Mitt Romney and the GOP lost, but it wasn’t for lack of money. They spent a lot; they just didn’t get enough bang for the buck.
Billionaire Sheldon Adelson alone donated $150 million. But Romney lost anyway, especially among unmarried women.
Which is why I think that rich people wanting to support the Republican Party might want to direct their money somewhere besides TV ads that copy, poorly, what Lee Atwater did decades ago.
My suggestion: Buy some women’s magazines. No, really. Or at least some women’s Web sites.
One of the groups with whom Romney did worst was female “low-information voters.” Those are women who don’t really follow politics, and vote based on a vague sense of who’s mean and who’s nice, who’s cool and who’s uncool.
No, it's just that lots of dumb broads who are too busy getting pedicures and facials to follow politics just have this silly idea that Republicans are "uncool" and "mean."
Since, by definition, they don’t pay much attention to political news, they get this sense from what they do read. And for many, that’s traditional women’s magazines — Redbook, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, the Ladies Home Journal, etc. — and the newer women’s sites like YourTango, The Frisky, Yahoo! Shine, and the like.
The thing is, those magazines and Web sites see themselves, pretty consciously, as a propaganda arm of the Democratic Party.
Uh, really? Take a look at the latest issue of Glamour. Why, it might as well be Mother Jones!
Anyway, I'm sure Putz's idea will be a big success. What should this new GOP women's magazine be called?
Yes, apparently Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds thinks the reason London and Prague and Stockholm have better infrastructure than New York and Los Angeles and Chicago is because the US "blew" theirs "up."
Now, I studied World War II in college, but I must have missed the part when American B-17s were dropping bombs on the Swedes.
Fed: Americans’ wealth plunges 40 PERCENT in last 3 years. Obama regime is an enemy force intentionally destroying US.
And, naturally, Steve Doocy of Fox News (see above clip).
It was a jaw-dropping statistic that was flashed across the country yesterday, the Federal Reserve has figured out that over the last three years the net worth of the average American family has fallen 40% over three years, wiped out two decades worth of America’s wealth, mainly because house values have dropped.
The rank dishonesty and revisionist history here is just staggering, even for wingnuts.
In case anyone forgot, George W. Bush was in the White House in 2007, 2008 and 2009. The 2009 budget is his. President Obama's rescue policies didn't kick in until mid-2009. The GOP controlled the White House from 2001-2009, the Senate from 2001-2007, and the House from 2001-2007. $14T economies don't turn on a dime.
This is another reason why the Obama administration officials should've been using the phrase, "Bush Recession" over and over, right from the get-go in January 2009. Reagan's people were bemoaning the "Carter Recession" as late as 1983. Sure, it wouldn't have stopped propagandists like Glenn Reynolds from rewriting history, but it would've made it harder for them to get away with it.
Filthy. Parasites. Disgusting, overbreeding candidates for sterilization and extermination. Possessed of false morals and a “breeding culture.”
Hitler talking about the Jews? Nope. This is Discovery Channel hostage-taker James Lee talking about ... human beings. Compared to Lee, Hitler was a piker, philosophically: Der Fuehrer only wanted to kill those he considered “subhuman.” Lee considered all humans to be subhuman.
Lee was a nut, an eco-freak who said he was inspired by Al Gore’s environmental scare-documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth.” His badly written “manifesto” underscores his craziness. He hated “filthy human babies.”
But, of course, Lee’s not alone. Looking at the environmental literature, we find terms like those used above -- the currently stylish description is “eliminationist rhetoric” -- used widely, and plans for mass sterilization are fairly common.
Oh really? This is an extraordinary claim. Can Reynolds provide his readers with any examples of this kind of rhetoric from "the environmental literature," let alone any evidence that it's "used widely"?
Well, no. The best he can come up with is the completely discredited claims about John Holdren -- indeed, repeating the 'Lie of the Year' nominee as though it were fact, and then saying merely that Holdren "distanced" himself from the supposed beliefs -- plus some nutty chatter at Internet forums and the results of Google searches. He cites Al Gore specifically, but cannot present any examples wherein Gore might even half-suggest such anti-humanist sentiments as those used by Lee in his manifesto.
In fact, Reynolds' description of all this is breathtakingly dishonest, since the language of Lee's that he cites largely comes from this passage in Lee's manifesto:
Immigration: Programs must be developed to find solutions to stopping ALL immigration pollution and the anchor baby filth that follows that. Find solutions to stopping it. Call for people in the world to develop solutions to stop it completely and permanently. Find solutions FOR these countries so they stop sending their breeding populations to the US and the world to seek jobs and therefore breed more unwanted pollution babies. FIND SOLUTIONS FOR THEM TO STOP THEIR HUMAN GROWTH AND THE EXPORTATION OF THAT DISGUSTING FILTH! (The first world is feeding the population growth of the Third World and those human families are going to where the food is! They must stop procreating new humans looking for nonexistant jobs!)
That rhetoric, particularly the "anchor baby" stuff, is not at all common among environmentalists, except perhaps for the tiny contingent of John Tanton fans out there. But it is extremely common on the right -- particularly among the nativists who have been populating the broadcasts at Fox News for the past several years, notably in recent months as they advocate for repealing the 14th Amendment.
It's clear that Lee's radicalism is an amalgam of right- and left-wing ideologies. But the violent behavior he exhibited has been far more common the right -- particularly on immigration issues -- than it has been on the left, for many years now.
Now, it's tempting to revert to Glenn Beck mode in dealing with this: to claim that they're all just nutcases, and that nothing anyone says should be held responsible for the violent acts of the mentally ill.
