I just can’t not look, even though I know I’d be better off just getting to my destination faster. Despite my best efforts to not pay any more attention, Cemetery’s title was pretty much my exact quote this morning when I saw this over at our favorite Brady Board member’s blog. I will reproduce the portion of the comment here in case it disappears into the pool of Reasoned Discourse:
So here are some examples of hand grenades, which are being smuggled into Mexico as we speak, according to Brady Campaign Board members:
They are even offering, the horror, a chance to win a pistol with it too I guess, and in the colors Bloomberg hates. Surely that will also end up fueling violence in Mexico. And we all know what every Mexican drug dealer wants under his tree at Christmas time…. just to make sure your kids know who’s boss, and stuff. I had no idea that Amazon was such a big time supplier! Wait, wait, how about this one, “Jose was such a great guy when we had parties down at the drug cartel office, until he bought one of these. It took the janitor three hours to clean up the mess!”
Surely Joan Peterson has at least enough ability to tell truth from falsity to know the difference between a real grenade and a lamp shaped like one? Or a cigarette lighter? Paperweight? Or an air device that just sprays plastic beads everywhere? I have to believe the answer is yes, because if the answer is no, this is more an issue in distinguishing reality from fantasy rather than truth from falsity. In this realm, I’m a real Airline Captain, because I’m going to go home tonight and hop on the the X-plane flight server and go somewhere in my very own Boeing 737. So just call me Captain Sebastian from now on. Do I get a barrel of rum? Who wants to go to Bermuda? Wait, Airline Captains can’t drink. Someone call the FAA and report me immediately.
Sorry folks, this just has me in stitches. I usually try to keep it classy, but sometimes you just have to laugh at your opponents. Before I believed there was value in maintaining a dialog with the other side. Now I am absolutely sure there is value in it!
UPDATE: Seems now she’s suggesting they ought to be illegal because you could take a deactivated grenade and make it live again. Does she also believe in prohibiting bottles because I could fill one with gasoline, stick a rag in it, and make a molotov cocktail? Does she favor banning iron pipes?
As soon as you’re dealing with explosives, you’re probably already breaking existing law. Definitely if you put it in something meant to fragment. Inert grenades are hunks of metal lady! That’s all they are. There’s no explosive, fuse or detonator in them.
And this is who we’re told should be making public policy? Please. I’m really curious to know what magical properties inert hunks of metal have in Joan Peterson’s mind.
Evidence of brain damage or what? Off the rails is more and more convincing – a real intellectual trainwreck.
It’s not polite to laugh at the handicapped you know. Didn’t your parents teach you manners?
It has to be a mental defect. I’m sure of it.
another X-Planer!
I know Joe. Sometimes I can’t help it :)
I went through this same exercise yesterday. She declined to post my comment.
Though, she did ultimately post my comment about how an inert hand grenade casing is no more or less capable of being made into an explosive than a $1 length of pipe from the local hardware store.
I was hoping to engage in meaningful dialog, but if someone says something that refutes her beliefs, she responds with “What???” or just moderates their comment into oblivion. People with a firm position don’t do that.
And yeah, when I saw that her examples of evil hand grenades that can be bought online were either airsoft or lighting fixtures, I pointed that out. Of course, that comment was moderated into the ether.
Something’s definitely not right though. I mean, that’s getting into “and these are my 80 lovely cats” territory.
“hand grenade lamp”
Does that mean my 70s era lava lamp counts as owning my own volcano?
If I had to guess what happened, Mike, the sequence of events was roughly like this:
(1) Since she subscribes to the Brady narrative that there’s no meaningful regulation of arms in the United States, she just knows, intuitively, that crates of hand grenades are being passed around under the table on a regular basis, probably along with belt-fed machineguns and shoulder-fired missile launchers.
(2) She posts a few Mexican Gun Canard links, in which Mexican authorities’ bitching about hand grenades figure prominently.
(3) She gets challenged on those links and the quotes therein.
(4) She does a quick Google search for “hand grenades” and posts the results without ever reading them, because obviously the links will confirm what she already knows.
(5) She gets comments from you and I pointing out that, um, those are toys and novelties, not actually hand grenades. Rather than own up to the mistake — which would involve a tacit admission that her intuitions do not reflect reality — she moderates those comments into the bit-bucket and slips into Cranky Old Person mode: “I don’t know why those inert casings are legal to sell anyway.”
I guess I should have kept reading in the comment. So basically anything she disapproves of ought to be banned? Jesus. Who died and made her Mussolini?
Her full comment was along the lines of how those inert casings could be turned back into evil, evil hand grenades; and thus she couldn’t understand why they were available for sale.
Hence my response about lengths of pipe.
Back in high school (we’re talking 20+ years ago), I knew kids that made pipe bombs out of, well, pipes. It’s a hell of a lot easier to get hold of pipes than inert grenades, so maybe we need some “common sense” pipe laws too.
I tried mentioning that there’s no such thing as a private sale of NFA items, such as hand grenades and RPGs, but alas, my comment was not published. Maybe my admonition to drop the common sense routine and attempt some actual research directed the post to the trash bin.
Her attempt to shoehorn “common sense” into every post is supremely tacky, by the way.
I wonder how many comments died to Reasoned Discourse? I politely pointed out that the grenades in question were dummy grenades and the Joan-Filter ate my comment. At least Captain Sebastian lets me post my nonsense here.
Maybe I should tell her about my homemade pneumatic semi-auto potato gun I made in high school. That would have her calling for a ban on a whole isle of Home Depot!
This lady can’t be serious.
http://armaborealis.blogspot.com/2010/10/reasoned-discourse.html
Luckily, Notepad doesn’t forget.
I think it is interesting how misogynistic Ms. Peterson is coming out to be. She advocated banning assault weapon features like adjustable stocks because they look scary. I highlighted that my wife uses an adjustable stock on the shotgun because that feature allows smaller framed women to safely use a firearm that is full-sized. Crickets.
Likewise, one of her hand grenade “proofs” links to a website that bashed a female police officer using sexual slurs and inappropriate references. The cop may or may not have acted appropriately, but her being female is not relevant in any manner, and the sexual slurs are totally inappropriate. Great bedfellows.
Cheers,
Chris from AK
By the way, can we start taking bets on when full-on Reasoned Discourse will break out? I’ve already noticed that the antis are getting a greater proportion of posts in. Either (1) the same few antis are getting really fired up, (2) the gunnies are getting bored, or (3) one side is being heavily moderated.
Up here in Alaska we take bets on when the ice will break in the spring. This is sort of the same thing.
I suspect a combination. I haven’t been commenting much because there’s not much point to it.
another X-Planer!
Yep… making a flight now in the Citation Mustang. My callsign is N1974Y. The x-flightserver is never too busy or formal. I use it to track my fake flying hours. Hope to see you out there.