Robb Allen highlights a pro-gun article written on the dime of the Joyce Foundation’s media payment program in Minnesota. If that doesn’t make you laugh out loud at least once today, I don’t know what will.
Month: June 2014
Who Needs a Gun?
I don’t know about you, but I’d certainly feel safer with my S&W 629 on my hip, loaded with .44 Magnum soft points. I’d hate to experience this kind encounter with nothing better than frantically searching for a rock, or hoping if I couldn’t outrun the bear, I could at least outrun my jogging partner.
Sadly, a .44 revolver is not an option for Canadians. Spray would have probably been enough to dissuade this bear, in the absence of a firearm, though, and I don’t think even Canada restricts bear spray. Don’t go out into the woods unprepared.
Gun Possession in Iraq
Clayton Cramer notes that reports out of Iraq show that the ISIS leaders have declared new rules for those in area they control that include a gun ban for anyone not in their ranks. It’s interesting how that also comes along with a ban on any public gathering not organized by ISIS as well.
It’s almost like those people who use the bumper sticker phrase that their Second Amendment right protects the First Amendment rights of others might possibly be on to something about the importance of both rights.
Legal Hunting Targeted by Facebook
Facebook locked the admins of a hunting-related page out of putting up new content after they pulled down a perfectly normal hunting photo that didn’t violate any laws or guidelines and claimed that it does not meet community standards.
One of the biggest hurdles Facebook has is not only growing their audience, but keeping the audience it has. Banning perfectly legal photos & pages just because their California staffers don’t like an outdoor tradition seems like it could easily send users running for other social media outlets.
Creative Counting & Expanding Agendas
Miguel and Thirdpower look at various photos and reports from the gun control march in New York where Moms Demand Action claimed over 1,000 people participated in their walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. They both notice that the photos from various angles appear to come up far shorter than the numbers claimed.
And, just as a reminder that Bloomberg’s Every Mom and Town Mayor Demanding Action isn’t really just about “background checks” like they try to claim. They are reviving the demands for magazine bans, mandatory storage laws, and cutting concealed carry options.
Hickenlooper: Let Me Feed You Another Lie…
I really hope that Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper keeps on talking because he’s keeping himself in the press for all of the right reasons – at least from our perspective of wanting to see him lose his re-election bid.
First, he “apologizes” for not talking to local law enforcement before pushing gun control that they would end up suing that state over. However, in his apology, Hickenlooper lied to the sheriffs by claiming that he never spoke to Bloomberg during the gun control push. Except he did, and there are records to prove it.
It would seem that perhaps Hickenlooper’s version of “stick[ing] to the facts,” a phrase he used to open his lie to the sheriffs, is a bit more like “sticking to complete falsehoods and hoping that no one has yet obtained the phone records to prove it’s a total fabrication.” I have to say, I hope that he stays in the media for such gaffes.
Juggling More Flaming Torches
Today I started an engagement at a new client, so my blogging schedule is going to be thrown for a loop while I try to figure out how to work everything in. It’s high-performance computing work though, so there’s not much of a learning curve, and I can hit the ground running. But starting a new client is still pretty much like starting a new job, and I still have my current work to do as well.
For the past few years I’ve been working on special projects internally, trying to develop a product pipeline that can sustain the company more reliably than billable hours. But thanks to the awful winter we lost a boatload of money in the first quarter, so volunteered to go billable for a bit to help make it up. Everyone else on my projects has to juggle billable hours with internal project work, and I didn’t think I should be any different.
Unlike our opponents, who do this for a living, or who are stinking rich enough to not need employment, I have a mortgage to pay, and I like eating better than ramen. This first week might be a little rough blog wise, but I’m working with Bitter to help make up the short-fall. After that I should have a new schedule figured out and things will appear to return mostly to normal.
Jersey City’s Gun Contracts
Jersey City’s little experiment that their supporters describe as an effort to force all police and military firearms purchases to be based on “the social responsibility of the manufacturer” instead of how well the firearm functions to defend their lives has had the expected impact: significantly higher costs to taxpayers, few companies willing to do any kind of business with them, and no real answers to their gun control questionnaire.
Shocker.
Abramski Opinion Released Today
The Supreme Court has finally weighed in on Abramski v. United States today, and it was a 5-4 decision written by Kagan for Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor with Scalia dissenting and joined by Thomas, Roberts, and Alito. If you’re looking for more background documents on the case, here’s the SCOTUSblog page.
The Messaging Problem of Mass Shootings
Did you know that mass shootings that wouldn’t be resolved by more gun control are simply a messaging problem rather than a failure of the mental health system to get clearly troubled and dangerous people help?
Oh, and the primary reason gun owners don’t trust gun control advocates to stop at background checks is simply because Edward Snowden disclosed that the NSA is snooping on everyone instead of the reasons like the fact that they propose banning the most popular types of firearms sold today and the President recently praised other countries for the fact that they confiscated firearms.
These are the reasons that Mark Glaze gave for not getting more gun control passed recently. I guess I should give him credit for acknowledging that many of the mass shootings wouldn’t be stopped by their proposals, but I do find it a little disturbing that those instances, because they don’t fit their political narrative, are really just considered to be messaging problems to gun control advocates instead of an opportunity to discuss how to address mental health issues.
I do also find it amusing that he argues Congress’s debate over the Farm Bill is why none of you readers trust the government to handle gun control. It has nothing to do with the actual proposals by lawmakers that they boast about and submit as legislation.
And none of that distrust on overreach could ever be attributed to Bloomberg’s own allies in the gun control movement who Glaze himself represented. I mean, sure, we found that those allies used their official positions in government to steal charitable gifts given to those in poverty and order the police to round up people they would eventually hold hostage at gunpoint, but it’s all Edward Snowden’s fault for teaching us not to trust government the way that good old Mayor Mike and his gun control buddies need us to in order to get more gun restrictions passed.