A Compromise Bill My Ass

So 16 Republican senators voted on a bill today that NOBODY has seen.  Nobody.  We've seen a synapsis, but nothing of substance on the actual bill itself.  Sen Mike Lee (R-VA) annouced at 1700L (1900 EDT) that the updated bill from March was supposed to be posted on line within the hour.  Of course, he'd been hearing that exact same thing for the last 48 hrs.

So I have a question for those who just sold out their Countrymen (I already know the answer, I just want to get the question itself off my chest). 

Were you born this stupid, did you have to take classes, or did it take practice?

I mean really? You voted on a bill YOU HAVEN'T EVEN SEEN YET!

I've heard of some dumb shit in my life, hell, I've even done some of it. 

But voting away your rights without even reading what it is you're even voting on?  That's even wayyyyy beyond felony stupid.  That's a class of stupid light years ahead of anything you've ever done before, and that's a hell of a long list.

Additionally, this is being touted as a 'compromise' bill.  Bullshit.  A compromise bill would be that the gun owning community gets something in return, like say the repeal of the Hughes Amendment. No, this is a compromise bill in the fact that every single politician that voted for it, voted to compromise the rights of their fellow citizens.

A pox on every one of them. 

Time To Turn The Tables

Since the anti gun forces are so quick to equate ownership of certain types of firearms, membership in certain civil rights organizations, and opposition to their hairbrained schemes as being guilty of committing the atrocious acts of a very few crazed nut jobs, I'm going to start returning the favor.

They want to call me a murderer because I'm a member of the NRA?  Fine.  Then the next time a dipstick politician talks about using call boxes and whistles and throwing up an attacker, I'm going to call them a rapist.  Why?  Since they have seen fit to deny these people the means and ability to defend themselves from such an attack, that makes them an accessory to the crime.  If you do something to facilitate a felony, doesn't that make you just as guilty as if you had actually done the deed?  I mean, we can charge an accomplice with murder if the other suspect dies when shot by a homeowner can't we?

There you go.  Next time someone gets shot and is not able to defend themselves effectively because they couldn't fight back, then the pol who supported/voted for the law that stripped the victim of the means of defense is a murderer, plain and simple.

Pissed

I've largely been silent on the gun control issues lately because folks with bigger brains and better skills have been saying exactly what I've been thinking.

(WARNING:  I'm about to break my no expletive rule.)

Today, an editorial in my old home state struck a nerve and pissed me right off.

First, to Mr Damson, hailing from my hometown I say this.  Fuck off you piece of shit.  You have no business telling me or any other gun owner what we can and cannot own.  I could give a shit less if you used to have a carry permit.  I could also give a shit that you used to be a member of the NRA and that you left the organization because they were too extreme.  Guess what fucknuts, they aren't even close.  Gunowners of America, Second Amendment Foundation, and Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms are much more extreme than the wafflers at NRA.

You're a real gun owner because you have 8 guns and go hunting.  Big fucking deal.  I have an order of magnitude more than you do, but only 3 of them were designed at the outset as a classic 'hunting' rifle.  But here's the kicker you moron.  Every single rifle I own I can hunt with.  Every one.  And since the state of Wyoming doesn't limit magazine size, I've taken some of my rifles hunting with a 75 round drum.  Do I need 75 rounds?  No.  But it pisses pants-shitting Fudds like you right off and that's the point.  Just like suppressors.  When the state allows them for hunting, I'll be taking one of those with me as well.  I originally wanted to use it to protect my hearing, but since it offends your sensibilities, I'll use it just to piss you off.

So take your dumb-ass nuclear weapon and Apache helicopter argument and go back to the sheep pen you crawled out of.

Update on Constitutional Carry

So the governor vetoed Constitutional Carry. That much is clear.

But what pissed me off, and this has been worming it's way around my brain since Friday, is what he said.

He didn't want to increase the workload on police.

What??????

Excuse me, just a minute here Governor. I thought that's why we hired cops. They're job is to catch people breaking the law. You know, the criminal element? If that job is too hard, if that job is too taxing, then what does that say about the state of law enforcement and the people who go around creating stupid laws that force police to go around doing stupid shit instead of catching the truly criminal among us?

If they can't do the job, or it's too hard for them, then they need to find something else to do. Period.

Workload my ass. This was a cop-out (pun fully intended), plain and simple. It's not like they don't run a background check when they stop you for crossing the double yellow line. Or when they decide they want to check your ID for no apparent reason other than you were there and so were they. Isn't that why we pay for those dispatch centers? Don't they have that kind of information available at their finger tips?

This Whole Thing Has Got Me Thinking

Dangerous, I know. But with all the hubub over Rush Limbaugh's comments on one Sandra Fluke and non-stop fake outrage inspired by same, this whole thing has got me thinking about what is, in fact, a 'right'.

Others have probably said this more eloquently than I, but let begin by stating one thing flat out: Your existence in this world, while admirable on your parents part for managing to get you through your formative years without drinking the Drano or becoming a hood ornament for a 1979 El Camino, does not make whatever it is you think you need a right.

That includes, but is not limited to internet access, free pizza, a car, a cell phone, a FaceSpace page(s), free candy, Nike Air Jordans, a tablet (either the old fashioned kind for writing on or the new-fangled contraption that looks like an overgrown cell phone), free Girl Scout cookies, free ice cream, a free birthday party at Chuckie Cheese, or any manner of stuff that you deem free (but in fact costs me more money out of my paycheck every week).

It also does not include behavioral based activities such as shooting up whatever the cocktail drug of choice is this week, sticking whatever feels the best where decent folks don't care to talk about, with whomever you met in your drug-induced deleria.

And you damned sure don't have the right to force the rest of us to pay for the consequences of your 'whatever feels good today' attitude. If you get something Ajax can't wash off and penicillin can't cure, it ain't my f'in problem. You got the crusty crotch from someone, fine. Go deal with it yourself.

Because you can't keep your legs closed doesn't mean I get to pay for whatever contraceptive you think you need. You wanna go play mattress-back queen of the frat house? Go for it. You want to turn into a door knob where everyone gets a turn? Couldn't give two shits less. You want to play glory hole, go right ahead. But don't for one ever-loving minute think that ANYONE else should pay for your choices. Because that's what they are, choices.

As someone I admire once said, your right of freedom to be you also includes my right to be free from you. And that includes paying for the consequences of you acting like a complete moron.

Pissed Me Right Off It Did

While doing a little Googling this afternoon I came across this.

Oh. My. God.

Can you say RCOB? (Red Curtain of Blood for the uniniated...)

By the third paragraph I was starting to get pissed. By the fifth, I was livid. And by halfway through the article, I was ready to throw my computer out the window.

What kind of petty tyrannical BS is this? Just sitting here trying to put this outrage into words, I'm getting pissed all over again.

Arresting a man because his daughter drew a picture of her Dad with a gun? Have we lost our ever-loving minds?

So in all this, how do you charge someone with possession of a firearm because their daughter drew a damn picture? Can someone explain this to me?

And to top it all off, after being cuffed, led out of his daughters school in handcuffs, violated by a strip search, kept in the dark for several hours about why he's been arrested, had his children taken from him, they want him to sign a piece of paper absolving them of any wrong doing by authorizing the search....AFTER THE FACT!

I find it telling this article doesn't allow comments, as I believe their server would have melted down after word of this got out.

I'll tell you one thing, I wouldn'tve signed that piece of paper if they had a gun to my head. After all that, my name would be on the city hall because I would be owning me some local government.

And just put perfect to the whole article, it's in Canadia. That sure explains a lot, but still.

The Blame Is Strong In This One...

Huh. So an Executive Agency in the government decides it wants to push a meme about US guns fueling Mexico's violent crime problem, can't get the corroborating trace data to support such claims, and resorts to taking the matters into their own hands.

And it's all the NRA's fault.

What we know for sure at this point. (Obviously abridged, since to try and capture the entire timeline here would take up wayyyyy to much space. You can check out the Gunwalker time line at the National Gun Rights Examiner, here.) The ATF forced multiple gun dealers in Arizona to sell guns (2000 plus at this point, it could be more) to people those merchants knew were straw buyers, but were told point blank by the ATF to sell to anyway.

Those buyers were surveilled and were NOT interdicted before their purchases were turned over to gun runners. As a result, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed in a fire fight with gun runners in Dec 2010. Found at the scene were two guns traced to Operation Fast and Furious. Another federal agent, Jaime Zapata, was killed in Mexico with a gun linked to a similar operation in Texas.

We have senior Justice Dept officials on record as using the results of this operation as a justification for the border states rule on multiple sales of long guns.

But all this is the NRA's fault? Really?

As Ron White would say, I don't think so, Scooter.

Packaging Fail

Why do you package up a gun cleaning kit, where everything has a place all nice and neat, only to GLUE the damn thing shut?

Note to the manufacturers of Winchester's nifty little cleaning kit. When you want people to be able to use the packaging over and over again, this is not how you go about doing it.

I Would Have Killed Him Where He Stood

The question I have is what would you have done in this situation?

Well Ain't This Special

I was going to write up a post about the moron whose family sued Glock because he stole the pistol from a friend by stealing the key to his lock box and then accidentally discharging said firearm into his leg trying to return it, but this is much better.

It would seem that 2 years ago this month, a deluded schizo named Erik Ayala went and bought himself a gun from a pawn shop. Two weeks later, he goes and shoots a bunch of exchange students for which he took the cowards way out by committing suicide.

In response to this, his family is suing EVERYONE involved. From the pawn shop that sold him the gun, to the nightclub where it happened because it was in 'a high crime area downtown', to the Rotary Club (yes the Rotary Club) which sponsored the exchange students 'because they dropped off at least one of the victims' at the nightclub in question. For $1.8 mill.

Aside from the lawsuit-happy bloodsucker representing the family here, let's take a look at that pawn shop situation for a second. The complaint points out that the perpetrator was mentally unstable and that the shop 'should have known he was a danger to himself and others. Really? Now, I've never worked in a gun store, but I do spend a lot of time in them. I've seen a wearing a plaid shirt, khaki pants, and bright yellow rain boots walk in on a 100 degree day to shop and trade firearms. I've seen birkenstock-wearing hippie types lean on the counter and talk about the latest 1911 clone to hit the store, and I've seen your average everyday working class stiff walk in and buy a (insert handgun of choice here). Not once have I ever seen the 'dangerous to himself and others' guy walk in and plunk down some bread for a new Roscoe.

How, exactly, is the counter monkey supposed to know that 'Dangerous to Himself & Others' is actually dangerous to himself and others? Oh, there's that whole NICS check thing, but that system is only as good as the information that gets reported to it. No, everything went according to the law. He filled out the form, the store clerk made the call, it was approved, and 'Dangerous to Himself and Others' walked out with a 9mm Gat. Maybe if the coworkers who noticed that 'DTHAO' had accompanied him to the pawn shop that fateful day, maybe none of this would have happened.

As it is, trying to discern the motives of someone buying a gun without a crystal ball and an open copy of their mental health records, is just so much pissing in the wind. This situation, much like the one in Tuscon, is more of an indictment of the system than of the dealer. Oh, and a bloodsucking personal injury lawyer...

A Note

To the driver of the red Dodge Durango at McDonalds this morning, thanks dickhead.

If it weren't for you, I wouldn't have known one person could take so long at the drive-through by placing an order for everything on the menu. Also, your time management skills seem to need a little tweaking. See, you should be placing your order for everyone on the planet while you are talking to them on your cell phone instead of taking notes before placing said order. And with incoming traffic coming in just fast enough to preclude me from backing up and going around your sorry ass just makes it that much more galling.

That you did this at 1025, right before the cut-off for breakfast tells me you are a procrastinator of the highest order.

So next time asshole, get the list together before you drag your sorry ass down to the drive-through. Or if that is too much to ask, walk your happy ass into the restaurant.

/Rant off\

A Crisis Averted

Or in this case, manufactured to justify further encroachments on gun owners.

So, the Just Us Dept has, in effect, created a crisis involving multiple sales to illegal straw buyers, who in turn ran these guns all the way to Mexico. Against the judgement of the stores affected, against street agent advice, and in contravention of any moral or legal code known to man.

See here, here, here, and here.

And don't forget David Codrea and Mike V's coverage of this still unfolding scandal here and here.

Because of this manufactured crisis, Just Us has deemed that multiple sales of long guns will require the same reporting requirements used in multiple hand gun sales.

Great. How long do you think it'll be before weapons from other, unknown, 'Fast and Furious' -type operations running at various locations around the country justify this requirement across the board? I think the answer will be sooner than you would think or expect.

What Part of No Don't They Understand?

Via a link from WoG, comes this little gem from Mercury news.

Setting aside the other obvious BS spouted by the author of this piece, I would like to focus on one part, the quote David used in his post:

"Gun Rights Activists did not immediately respond to phone calls seeking comment."

They didn't call David, or anyone else for that matter, and I'm pretty sure I'm so low on their list of names to call for a comment that I don't really matter much to them, but I'll give it a try anyway.

No. Nyet. Nada. Nein. Non. Mei. Nai. Uh-Uh.

For too many years, gun owners have been portrayed as knuckle dragging neanderthal hick hayseeds. For over 70 years we have given ground to a group whose sole idea of compromise is to give them everything they want in order to save, well something.

We hear things like compromise and common sense, all the while being portrayed as blood thirsty, willing to kill old people and babies to satiate our blood lust.

We gave in 1934, in order to pass the first real federal gun control act, to make sure that possession of certain types of vilified guns and accessories like a Thompson, or short-barrelled rifle/shotguns, and suppressors were made taboo and only available to the wealthy.

We gave in 1968, while more of our freedom and liberty were sacrificed in order to keep the Sirhan Sirhans and protesters of the day from getting their hands on weaponry. We stood by while easily affordable firearms were deemed too cheap to possess, while a petty tyrant sitting in a cushy office in a far away building decided for us what was 'sporting' and what wasn't with the stroke of a pen.

Even in our victories we've seen defeat. A bill to protect gun owners from an out of control bureaucracy (seems something never change, do they?) we got the shaft again, this time by a still controversial amendment that banned future manufacture of fully automatic weapons thus ensuring that only the truly wealthy can afford them.

We stood by in 1993 and 1994 while tragedy after tragedy was laid at our feet and more restrictions were placed upon us. Magazine capacity bans. Bans on cosmetic features. Bans on names. None of this did anything to stem the tragedies, but it made the hanky-wringers happy. We could debate the effectiveness of this particular law all day long, but the long and the short of it is it didn't work. It didn't ban anything. Weapons specifically named under the ban were still available, only they had different names and offending features such as bayonet lugs and threaded barrels were removed. Standard capacity mags that were readily available before 14 Sep 1994 were still available after 14 Sep 1994, they just cost a little more.

The only bone thrown to us in this mess was a sunset clause. 10 years, if left alone, this law would disappear. It was a contentious issue, a president who touted his NRA creds baffled gun owners by saying that if the extension came to his desk, he would sign it. When that law failed to garner the support it needed, I cheered. And I waited. I got my first no-ban gun a month after the sunset.

In those 7 years and change since that law sunsetted, crimes committed with sport utility rifles, and other weapons with standard capacity magazines have not gone through the roof. The only thing that has gone up is the media hysteria over such crimes when the do occur.

The Virginia Tech shooter didn't need extended mags. He needed the standard capacity mags that came with his gun, because he had time to reload. The Tuscon shooter stupidly used a 33 rd magazine used by competition shooters and hobbyists that is known to jam, thinking he could do a lot of damage. He did some, but because his weapon jammed, because he was using a magazine known to do so, he was able to be subdued by bystanders.

So, mister editorialist, I leave you with these questions. What exactly is a 'high capacity magazine'? I mean, I have rifles whose standard capacity is between 4 rds and 100. There are belt fed guns, perfectly legal for us mere peons to own, that take belts of 5 rds up to 250 or more. I have had pistols whose standard capacity is anywhere from 6 to 19 rds.

If, as you all like to claim, no one needs these magazines, and that possession of same is evidence of a desire to kill as many people as possible, then why on earth do the police need them? Are they somehow protected from the urge to kill large swathes of people by the magical talisman on their shirt? Are they imparted with some power during training at the Police Academy that wards off this urge, this desire?

What say you, Mister Gun Grabber?

What The Hell Is Going On?

I've been loosely keeping tabs on the situation down in Tuscon. Not that one, the one where a SWAT team shot (60 times!) one Jose Guerena while executing a blanket search warrant.

Some of the news on the subject I've got from Radley Balko, here, and a link from Say Uncle, here.

I say loosely, as I've been aware of the shooting since it happened, and I had noticed the way the story has shifted since the raid on 5 May. Shifted. That's an interesting phenomenon here.

Story starts out with a SWAT raid targeting marijuana operations in and around four houses in Tuscon. Then, it was a home invasion ring. Then it was a drug rip-off operation. Who knows what it'll be next week, let alone tomorrow.

All the while, the Sheriffs office, the same one who blamed the other tragedy in Tuscon in January on radical, right wing rhetoric is all about people not jumping to conclusions about what happened in this instance.

Wait..............whuh?

The blatant stonewalling and cover-up being perpetrated in and around this incident is astonishing, even for a SWAT raid that had seemingly gone awry. That people, even innocent people, get shot during these high-adrenalin, high stress raids is sadly not surprising. What is, in this instance, totally astonishing is that the Pima County SD is going farther to paint those who criticize this raid as quacks than they were to deal honestly in the Giffords shooting.

What scares me most, is that in light of recent court decisions around the country, particularly the one in Indiana about the same time this raid took place, is that even when these parties knowingly commit the illegal act of breaking through your door in the middle of the night (or in the case of Mr. Guerena, middle of the morning) that you have no reasonable expectation of remedy through armed resistance to forcible, illegal breech of your personal, private property.

Remember, too, that criminals have used the guise of a SWAT raid to burglarize and kill their victims. That an increasing number of these high impact raids are carried out as 'No Knock' actions (meaning the cops do not have to announce their presence so as to surprise those inside who may try to get rig of 'evidence') means that the further this escalates, the more likely the end result will not be everyone walking away with a 'Sorry to bother you, sir' attitude. No, it will most likely end with the homeowner, at a minimum, and possibly one or more law enforcement personnel being taken away from the scene feet first in a plastic, zippered bag.

What has this country come to? When my Great Grandfather was town Marshall of Sundance, WY, he patrolled the small town of 1500 all by himself. (Matter of fact, we still have the Colt .38 Sp revolver he carried while on the job.) According to my mother, he never had a deputy, but got assistance every once in a while from a deputy sheriff. Now, that same sleepy town of 15oo has 3 cops, plus the Crook County Sheriffs Dept which I haven't been able to find an exact number of deputies. (It is interesting to note that when my GGF retired, it took 13 cops to do the job he did himself. What does that say about community policing standards?)

Now, instead of teaching you a lesson by having a speeding motorist sit in front of stop sign for an hour to teach them a lesson, or dumping out the beer at the high school party, we have full blown armed encounters where its more important for the cop to come home safely than it is for the citizen.

As Mike V notes over at Sipsey Street, this is not going to end well for any party involved.

They Finally Got The Bastard

(Warning, language content ahead!)

So we got the bastard. Good fucking riddance to back rubbish.

I hope that terrorist asshole gets his asshole reamed by 72 Clydsedales. I hope he chokes on big, slimy, green donkey penii.

That is all.

At Least They Ain't Hiding It Anymore

Doing another run around Google News today, and came across this nifty little report from Homeland Security Today about how to deal with the narco-terrorists and gunrunning operations in Mexico. While most of the report deals with policy tools for dealing with the drug part of the problem, what caught my attention was the proposals regarding guns. From the HS Today:

To increase to control gun smuggling from the United States to Mexico, federal agencies should establish "registration requirements for large-volume ammunition purchases and unassembled assault weapons kit imports", the report said, as well as reporting requirements for multiple long-arms purchases.

It further goes on to state:

The United States must provide more resources to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), the primary agency charged with stopping arms trafficking, the report said, providing it with the capacity to investigate gun purchasing plots.

Furthermore:

The federal government should contemplate a ban on assault weapons and sniper rifles (emphasis mine) as such bans "have proved successful at the state level", the report suggested. Federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies must break down barriers to sharing information on gun crime data.

Leaving aside the gun trafficking issue for just a moment, this is a new, but not surprising twist in the campaign to ban guns. Before, we had the obligatory calls to ban assault weapons after every high profile shooting, whether they involved a so-called scary looking semi automatic rifle or not. We even had folks talking about using the '94 Scary Gun ban as a jumping off point to de-sensitize the public into going after other classes of boogey-man guns. The new wrinkle is the 'sniper rifle' bit. I would hazard a guess that the 20 lb brains that who wrote this probably didn't know that by using sniper rifle, they were REALLY talking about scoped bolt action rifles in calibers of .30 and up. You know, that favorite deer, elk, moose, or cape buffalo rifle in the average hunters gun safe. One would think, but I doubt it. It's a well known fact that THE hallmark of America is our marksmanship. Most of our Armed Forces are well trained in marksmanship principles even before they join up. So this little Freudian slip about sniper rifles isn't as innocuous as it seems. The other troubling thing about this report is the belief that we should give even more power and funding to a federal agency that, according to reports, has done more to arm the narco-terrorists than any gun-running operation could have hoped to accomplish. Evidently, they either haven't been following what's been going on with Project Gunwalker, or they are ignoring it all together. (My money is on the latter, personally.) For more on the Gunwalker scandal, Mike V over at Sispsey Street has all the tools, here, here, here, and here. And Michelle Malkin has a comprehensive round up of all the reporting to date, here.

Pisses Me Off

What really pisses me off are these letters and articles in newspapers around the country written by supposed gunowners. They all start off the same:

"I'm a gunowner, but I don't support..."

This statement is usually followed up by inserting whatever politically sensitive firearm is on the hotseat that particular week. It could be Glock, it could be DPMS or Colt. Or it could be an accessory that is on the block, such as standard capacity magazines.

Take, for instance, a commenter named 'Boo Hoo' over here.

Typical 'I'm a gunowner, but..." response. I own guns but I don't see the need for anyone to carry one. I own guns but I don't see the need for a gun with a magazine capacity of more than x rounds. I'm a gunowner, but I don't see why anybody would need (insert politically incorrect firearm reference here) for hunting, self defense, ad nauseum.

I'll tell you what we don't need. What we DON'T need is some jagoff speaking about crap he/she willfully knows nothing about. We don't need one 'gunowner' out of 80,000,000 trying to put the rest of us in a neat little box.

One thing he mentioned in his comment to the linked story (which was about the Brady Bunch picketing an open carry meeting, go figure, huh?) was that without a gun, the nutjob in Tuscon wouldn't have been able to kill 6 and wound 20. I got a news flash for him. 19 guys with box cutters took out 3000 10 yrs ago. A whackjob with a Ryder truck, some fertilizer, and some diesel fuel killed 168 in 1995. Nutjobs half a world away are killing that many and more with a rudimentary understanding of chemistry, some nails and ball bearings, and cell phone. Is he really that dense to think that mass killing in this country would magically disappear overnight if we could just get rid of those icky guns?

I got an idea. If you feel the need to post one of them "I'm a gunowner, but..." pieces in you local cat box liner, do us all a favor.

Keep your 'butt' out of it.

Scarrrry!

If this doesn't piss you off, I don't know what will.

(hat tip to Radley Balko from The Agitator)

What Is It...

About Big Box sporting goods stores and left handed people? We've got 2 here in RC, Cabela's and Scheels. I went looking for an inside-the-waistband holster for my Ultra-Raptor today. Both stores had plenty of IWB holsters on the racks, but nary a one, IWB or otherwise, for leftys. Now, in Cabela's defense, they have had lefty holsters on their racks before, but it's a hit-and-miss thing with them. Scheels? Not a one, ever.

Now I know that left handed folks are a numerical minority, but come on, really? Is it so hard to stock a FEW things for us southpaws? Kinda makes me feel about like a second class citizen. 'I'm sorry sir, but we don't stock them. We could order one for you...'

If I wanted it ordered, I would have ordered it and not came into the store looking for it, mmmkay?! Isn't that the point of having stores? So you don't have to order a product from either a catalog or online?

Is it too much to ask to be able to walk into a store and find something, ANYTHING, for a southpaw in the gun section of a Big Box sporting goods store?

It's enough to piss a fella off...