All the news that’s fit to link…
I’ve been very busy, so please forgive the light posting. On top of being busy with a project at work, it’s dues time for my club, and I’ve been dealing with banks to get ready for online invoicing and payment by credit cards for the first time. It’s not as bad as closing on a house, but it’s easier to buy a new car. Banks want you to sign over your first born for all this stuff. In fact, if they put that in some of the fine print, I might not notice.
I need to clean my tabs out though, so here goes:
Jimmy Kimmel called out for “White Privilege” on gun control. Make them live up to their own rules. And yes, gun control disadvantages poor minorities more than it disadvantages middle class white people. In the past, and arguably still today, that’s been its primary purpose.
Canada doesn’t have enough gun control, according to the people who advocate for gun control.
Tam: “Misunderstanding Self-Defense: Practical”
Clayton Cramer has some video of Bloomberg Bloomberging. Smartest strategic move Everytown has made is pushing him into the background and using him as a wallet rather than a face. What we need to do, conversely, is make sure everyone knows Everytown is Mike Bloomberg. I won’t mention them without his name if I can help it.
Minneapolis Star Tribune: “Liberal Maplewood millennial isn’t your typical gun rights advocate: ‘We’re normal people’” Note: “She left the NRA when it created ads she felt were polarizing, alienating and ‘extreme right wing.'” I’m not convinced that NRA is going to rethink the Angry Dana strategy, as long as their membership keeps growing. I think that has more to do with the shrillness of our opponents, but it’s hard to convince a civic organization to change course when they aren’t hurting for members.
Well, this will certainly harsh some narratives. The FBI: “Armed and unarmed citizens engaged the shooter in 10 incidents. They safely and successfully ended the shootings in eight of those incidents … Their selfless actions likely saved many lives.”
Boulder passed an assault weapons ban, and are now being sued in federal court. Colorado seems to have preemption, but my understanding is that the courts there have weakened it severely.
Reason has a pretty good article on “Assault Weapons,” most of it old hat to most of us, but some interesting bits I hadn’t heard, but are hardly surprising: “According to a Reason-Rupe survey conducted around the time that Feinstein introduced her 2013 bill, about two-thirds of Americans mistakenly thought ‘assault weapons’ fire faster than other guns, hold more rounds, or use higher-caliber ammunition. The respondents who harbored these misconceptions were especially likely to say such guns should be banned.”
It was disappointing to see a lot of assholes on our side of the issue giving this reporter shit in the comments: “Shooting an ‘assault weapon’ helped me understand the gun debate”
The Detroit News: “Dick’s walks risky line on guns.” I’m not big on boycotting as a tactic, but I’ll never set foot in another Dick’s again. I’ll cheer when they finally finish circling the bowl.
The Federalist: “Our rights aren’t contingent on a cost-benefit analysis. Whether guns are risky isn’t the point, but whether guns are a reasonable means of self-defense.”
The Swedes are preparing for war, with Ivan getting frisky again: “[W]e will never give up. All information to the effect that resistance is to cease is false.†There’s an old story, maybe it’s true, that during WWII the German Ambassador said to the Swiss Ambassador: “You have half a million men under arms. We could send a million men over the pass into your country, and what would you do then?” The Swiss Ambassador responded: “We’d tell our men to shoot two Germans before going home.”
