So this is my last week of Paternity Leave. We decided to put LaWeer’da into day care in a more-or-less “normal” schedule to shake-down any issues while I’m still at home and can swoop in if help is needed.
Dropped her off and she was really excited, lots of other babies for her to look at, and new toys and people. She didn’t even notice me leaving.
I on the other hand am NOT doing as well, but I’ll live.
Big day….
The theme for most of my blog posts is seeking change to the conversation- change to the gun culture- change to gun laws. It is not for the sake of change though. It is for the sake of saving lives. That is why I write this blog.
And by “Change the Conversation” its by having no conversation at all. Joan doesn’t want to play with us, she will delete most comments on her blog, and only comments (and rarely at that) on the blogs of other anti-gun groups. Also she’s lying about her reasons because when it comes to saving lives, we’re doing a pretty good job of it.
This is one of the big issues I don’t think gets talked about much in the debate between the 2nd Amendment and the gun-banners. BOTH sides are wanting the same end result. Its not like the NRA never talks about “Gun Death”, or isn’t the leading provider in gun safety training! One side says if we have less guns, we’ll have less crime. The other side says if good people can defend themselves against violence, there will be less violence.
Oh and look at that link I just posted, what do the antis have to counter that?
In the years I have been writing there is a definite change to the landscape. There are more groups working to make this change happen. Twitter and Facebook, for example, are now very effective tools for sharing messaging, points of view, articles and campaigns. It’s about time that gun violence prevention groups are organized and organizing for change. After the shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school, even more groups have emerged to put pressure on lawmakers to pass stronger gun laws. And with more people writing, blogging and posting on Internet sites, the truth is more often exposed about what the corporate gun lobby is doing to keep us in the dark about their true agenda
Interesting how she talks about a “Hidden Agenda”…given that she ignores how guns save lives, and crime has been dropping as more people keep and bear arms. And how she ignores the utter failures of previous gun control efforts, and their rank unpopularity, and simply spouts about banning more guns and restricting more rights. Who has an agenda?
And what’s the story with “More Voices” on the gun control side. I did a post wayy back when I first started this blog where I went down Jason “Baldr” Kilgore’s blogroll to show not only how infrequently anti-gun bloggers write compared to pro-gun bloggers, but also how many of those “separate” blogs are really all written by a handful of people working for the same organization (and I mean “Working for” as in paid to do it, rather than “Working For” as in compatriots for a common goal). Go have a look, and go and swing by Jason’s or Joan’s site to see how they’ve changed.
There are a few new faces on Jason’s roll, Joan doesn’t link as much as he does, but there are a TON of dead links, and links that have been removed. Hell there was one new blogger who I was reading who posted about 10 posts in about two months, then for reasons unknown locked all of his blogs, both the gun control one, as well as a few I found out about after the lock from reading his twitter backlog that sounded interesting.
More on that:
There’s much more in this article that informs us about how the gun lobby is reacting to the changes happening in the gun violence prevention movement. One thing is clear. This group hates former Mayor Michael Bloomberg who founded Mayors Against Illegal Guns. Why? Because finally there is someone on the side of gun violence prevention with money and influence to make change. Thanks to Bloomberg and the many other groups involved in the movement to change the conversation about guns and gun violence, change is beginning to happen. The Brady Campaign, Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, Moms Demand Action, Violence Policy Center, Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, Newtown Action, States United to Prevent Gun Violence, and many other groups, including those working in states all over the country are contributing to the new landscape that makes the gun lobby so nervous.
Well about Bloomberg. He’s no longer a mayor, neither is his co-founder, Boston’s Tom Menino (who is apparently dying of cancer…I won’t comment on that), and MAIG has pulled the listing of their members after so many quit, or had their names signed to MAIG pressers without ever being members, or after withdrawing their membership. Bloomberg is now spending his money on his own, or dumping money into Moms Demand Action, of which he is the primary money source.
The rest of those groups Joan lists are really just all subsidiaries of the same groups. Gun control groups are either funded by the Joyce Foundation, the Brady Campaign, or Michael Bloomberg.
Joan herself is a member of all three groups in one way or another, and makes her living being one of the leaders of Protect Minnesota, which funds its paid staffers through a Joyce Foundation grant.
Now of course multiple memberships isn’t a bad thing, I’m a member of multiple 2nd Amendment groups myself, but when the active membership of these groups is so very small one wonders how much work they’re doing to simply inflate their apparent numbers.
Change will only happen when the truth is exposed. The truth is that only some gun sales require background checks and others not. They are all selling the same products. Guns are all potentially dangerous. They should all be treated the same as say cigarettes where store clerks ask for IDs for anyone who looks too young to legally buy them. In addition, cigarettes are now behind counters where someone has to ask for them. Why? Because we have decided that they are bad for your health and not good especially for kids and teens. Alcohol sales are regulated as well. IDs are required for purchases if the buyer looks too young to be legal. Why? Alcohol can be bad for people as well. But all alcohol sales are treated the same. All cigarette sales are treated the same. Sales of some decongestants have been moved behind the counter where buyers must ask for them. Why? They can lead to illegal drug production and use. These restrictions just make common sense and we don’t seem to object to these changes because we have learned the truth about the risks and dangers involved. It is for the common good in the interest of public health and safety. Guns and their owners should be treated the same. But they aren’t. And that is a problem.
BIG lie! Joan is of course playing out the talking point for her “universal background check agenda” and comparing apples to masonry bricks. Yep, store clerks check ID for tobacco sales, alcohol sales, and Pseudoephedrine, but only Pseudoephedrine has mandated rules for its sale. I can’t remember the last time I had to show an ID to buy a beer in a store (Restaurants are a little more picky), or a cigar.
Still after that its no different than guns. I’ve given all of the above controlled substances to friends. No ID needed, and honestly no fear of prosecution either. Now try to go to a gun show and buy a firearm from a stranger without at LEAST pulling out your license. That’s an inconvenient truth for Joan.
Further what good has it done? Is there no longer a Meth problem in the United States? That should be enough to refute it ALL, as that’s the most restricted sale out there. Still most smokers start smoking in their teens, well before their 18th Birthday, and most people have their first drink of alcohol in High School!
But Joan somehow thinks it’ll work THIS time. Yeah, “Common Sense”.
Guns are dangerous and pose a risk to those who own them and carry them in public places. We should think about that when we allow people to buy them without background checks. But more than that, there should be more attention paid to these risks. So why are we not doing more about those risks and studying the risks like we do for other products and services? Because the corporate gun lobby doesn’t want us to.
Umm look at the above link from “Corporate Gun Lobby” National Shooting Sports. Again, guns are dangerous and have risks, but lawful citizens carrying guns and owning guns have made America SAFER! We’re pretty open about this, why are the antis spending all their time ignoring this and using twisted statistics to make it seem like it isn’t true?
We all know that talking about guns and gun violence comes with a lot of controversy. It shouldn’t. There is pretty much wide spread agreement that we should be requiring background checks on all gun sales. There is also agreement on some of the other controversial gun measures that have been proposed and have failed over the years. Why? The corporate gun lobby doesn’t want us to agree on solutions. Instead of joining us in efforts to stem the tide of gun violence, many in the gun rights community go in the opposite direction and actually flaunt their guns in public to make some kind of point.
No, because the entirety of people who support Joan’s agenda can fit into a small Hotel Banquet hall! We have more guns, we have less crime and violence, and the people know it, so your laws go down in flames! You have no support, so you have no success!
Lives are forever changed by gun violence. Faith communities can speak out and make a difference for change in our communities. I will be participating in one of these sabbath events on Sunday. I hope you will all find a faith community near you and find out what you can do to effect change. Check out the Faiths United to Prevent Gun Violence for more information. Participants will be singing, reflecting and hoping for non violence to become more prevalent than the violence that is so pervasive in America. They may even pray for truth and justice. Based on the few incidents I wrote about in this post, I would say that prayer will not be enough. Action is what is needed to enact the changes we deserve. We know we can do better so let’s get to work.
More like Joan’s agenda doesn’t have a prayer!
This is why I keep a gun close at hand in my home:
A South Florida man confessed to strangling his neighbor who confronted him while he was burglarizing her home last weekend, police said.
…According to a police report, Santoni was burglarizing an apartment on Northeast 118th Street in northeast Miami-Dade County when he was confronted by a woman who lived there.
…Santoni used a cord to strangle her and then continued to ransack the home, even stealing her car, the report said.
The victim’s body was discovered Tuesday.
Of course the “Gun Death” crowd capitalize on their specific flavor of violence to ban guns…but a gun would have been just what this victim needed.
You hear about this shit from time-to-time. “Big Boy Rules”, where the four rules of gun safety are disregarded for the sake of making training more realistic.
Here’s the latest example:
Now I get the core concept of it, and I even understand some of it. I remember when I was commuting on the Boston Subway every day. I had a 1911 in a horizontal shoulder holster, and I was surrounded by people at all times, and I was traveling through shitty parts of Boston. Once the station I was at got shut down because somebody had been murdered on Boston Common in a gang-shooting, and the suspect may have fled into the station I was at.
The idea that I may have to shoot somebody while on a subway platform, or in a subway car was very much non-zero. Carrying in a shoulder-holster or any cross-draw position means you may cover somebody behind you or around you with the muzzle before your sights are on target. Carrying in a strong-side holster, in the crowded conditions you still may sweep somebody before your sights are on target. Even worse, there may be somebody behind your attacker.
One must mitigate risk as best as possible, but an attack will not happen in ideal circumstances. I won’t get into all the other what-ifs but I will say that training to avoid as many 4-rules infractions, and standing strong on “Keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on target” is the one factor you can control damn near 100% will all help make things come out as best as possible.
So back to the “Big Boys”, they take the above notation that square-range rules won’t exist when you need to defend your life, so they have you train where those rules are openly flaunted.
At a glance it makes some sense. But what if you think about it more. Yeah, there might be friendlies down-range, so putting a live person there adds the gravity of that. Yeah you might need to engage targets behind and beside you in an attack, so the standard firing line and single safe-direction rules on most ranges won’t apply. The list goes on.
But still how realistic is this “Big Boy” range. In the above video you’re still shooting stationary cardboard targets. You won’t be engaging cardboard, and you won’t be engaging stationary targets.
You’re still at a range where you KNOW you will be shooting, that won’t happen either. I carry damn near every day, and I’ve only shot at safe ranges. In the first drill above you’re getting shot buy some guy…and then you’re shooting the cardboard BEHIND him. Sorry, somebody puts a pill in me and THEY are getting shot, not any other target.
The list goes on as you drop bigger trump cards on their trump cards. In the end it seems like tacti-cool masturbation.
I am NOT a cool operator. I’m comfortable and confident with my guns, and I’m reasonably skilled, but compared to my friends who take lots of shooting classes and compete, I’m that dipshit on the range with the Sigma or Hi-Point who can’t mark paper, and holds his gun like a British actor in a crappy action movie.
Still no matter how deep down this “more realistic” rabbit hole, you don’t ever seem to get to anything really resembling a REAL gunfight unless you go to some elite school where you get to play Thunderdome where two men enter an arena and only one leaves.
It just doesn’t add up. You don’t actually get THAT much more realistic, but you run the risk of giving your shooting partner a third nostril.
I say stick to what everybody else is doing. Listen to stories told by people who have survived REAL gun fights. Most of them have never shot but in a standard square-range until they needed to kill another person in self-defense.
I’ll take that risk over the much bigger risk of killing a friendly during a scheduled training exercise.
Ashley Marie Hurd, 26, a driver for Domino’s Pizza, took the order to a house on the 200 block of Stuart Avenue about 10 p.m., a police report said.
When she arrived, a man was standing outside, and she told him how much the bill was, said Lt. Todd Joyce, Fayetteville police spokesman.
As she was doing so, Joyce said, a second man, wearing a dark-colored jacket, came around from the side of the house.
The man put something to the back of Hurd’s head and demanded money, Joyce said.
…“Unbeknownst to them, she had a weapon,” Joyce said. “She pulled out a gun, and when she did, the suspects fled and they didn’t get anything.”
As I constantly say, Food Delivery drivers and real estate agents have some of the most dangerous jobs in America. For Real Estate agents, sexual deviants can pick out the person they want, and then ask them to take them to a vacant house at any hour of the day. Food Delivery the caller chooses the ambush location, and time, and the driver will brings food, cash, and a working car.
Also if you order from an established chain likely they have corporate lawyers who will advise the company to not let their employees carry weapons.
This woman is alive because she had a gun. She didn’t need to kill anybody to protect herself, and she will likely get fired for it.
Fired from Dominoes is not really a big deal. If I worked for that dump I’d carry against policy every day too, its not like delivering pizzas is that big of a resume booster.
Hopefully SOMEBODY will start a precedence where if your employer DEMANDS you go unarmed while at work, they are 100% responsible for your safety, and these foolish policies will go out the way they came in.
More of the same, from the same well I’ve been tapping:
Unregulated populace? Now the two clauses are not the same, as we’ve discussed here. Still that second clause is claiming no legal regulation of armed citizens. Really??
Now are you telling me the antis are 100% unaware of the NFA? Of the Gun Control Act, and the Brady Bill?
And that’s not getting into the web of local and state laws about carry, possession, limitations, and prohibitions of who can own, a firearm, where and how a firearm may legally be carried, and what accessories and features may or may-not be legal on a firearm.
If we’re unregulated, I NEVER want to see your “Common Sense” regulations!
This is an interesting story:
The Washington-based Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence brought the suit on behalf of Janet Delana, who said she warned the gun store not to sell any guns to her daughter, Colby Sue Weathers, because of a long history of mental illness.
…An employee who answered the phone at Odessa Gun & Pawn on Thursday said no one at the store had comment on the lawsuit, which names the store and three managers. The lawsuit was filed on Wednesday in the Circuit Court of Lafayette County in Lexington.
Weathers developed a high level of paranoia in 2006, was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 2011, and hospitalized on several occasions for suicidal tendencies, the lawsuit said.
The Social Security Administration determined she was “severely mentally ill,” the lawsuit states.
“Delana emphatically and urgently requested that Odessa not sell Weathers a gun because of the great likelihood that Weathers would use the gun to shoot herself or others,” the lawsuit states.
According to the lawsuit, a gun shop employee told Janet Delana that the store had “little control” over whether to sell her a gun. But the lawsuit says Missouri law allows a gun shop employee to use “individual judgment” in refusing sale to some customers.
Now overall I’m going to call this a frivolous lawsuit. Even if the shop owner does have discretion to not sell to somebody with a clean NICS check, the bigger question isn’t asked. What was the shop’s relationship with the mother who requested they not sell to her daughter. Did they know her previously? How did she conduct herself with the request? How did she know THIS would be the shop where her daughter was going to buy a gun?
If they didn’t know the mother from Adam, how are they to know the DAUGHTER is the crazy one, and the Mother wasn’t off-her-rocker with her request? They just as likely could be on the receiving end of a lawsuit for refusal to sell, and given that they have zero access to private health records, nor can they tell a person’s future state of mind, I could see this being just as big a lawsuit fodder as those bakers who refused to bake a cake for a gay couple. I mean doesn’t ANY store have the right to refuse service to somebody they don’t want to serve? Not in America they don’t, not anymore.
Now the bigger issue is what I consider the “Progressive” Mentality. Notice it was somebody ELSE’S responsibility to keep her daughter away from guns, and given that this woman is working with the Brady Campaign with her lawsuit, I suspect even before her daughter showed signs of mental illness, she probably wasn’t friendly with ANYBODY who sells guns legally.
In a perfect world the Mother should have been able to take steps to get her daughter committed against her will which would have eliminated FFLs as a source for her to get guns. These avenues exist, and there is no mention if she had attempted those options.
Still an involuntary commitment is damn near impossible to do these days without the person committing a serious crime while in an insane state.
That’s something we need to have a dialog about, not if some honest business man should lose his shop because he doesn’t take every request off the street at face value.
The stabbing death of a 32-year-old borough man last week has been ruled a homicide.
…Detectives from the Upland Police Department and Delaware County Criminal Investigations Division discovered the incident was physical domestic disturbance between the male and female, “and during the physical altercation the white male sustained a stab wound to the chest,” according to a press release signed by Upland Deputy Police Chief Nelson Ocasio on Feb. 22.
KNIVES MAKE DOMESTIC ARGUMENTS TURN TO MURDER TOO EASILY!!!
Of course most homes have knives, so really it’s the person not the tool.
Seriously this one is solid gold!
Seriously, Jason, do you actually believe this?
I have guns BECAUSE I have a child whose only means of defense is what I and my wife can give. Because of that we have guns! Not “Sporting Guns” but honest-to-goodness made-for-killing-people guns. If somebody tries to harm me or any of my loved ones I will have the very best tools for defending us at hand. My daughter is worth it.
As for “Felons Obtaining Guns”, did I miss a memo where the NRA is for repealing GCA ’68? Its a crappy law, and need of revision, but overall its a law where its heart is in the right place. I subscribe to the philosophy that if somebody isn’t trustworthy enough to own a gun they shouldn’t be able to freely walk around the same streets that I do, but as a pragmatist we simply can’t lock up or execute every violent felon out there. On the other hand, somebody who is convicted of perjury like Martha Stewart is no more a threat to anybody’s safety than the dude on the corner who’s never been arrested for anything. Non-Violent felonies are a bit of a red herring in the idea of gun ownership.
Sorry Jason, put down the kool-aid cup (pun intended) but the NRA is still 100% behind all convicted felons never owning a gun. Still like cocaine which is 100% illegal for EVERYBODY spare the police per evidence, and a few research labs with DEA permits, people will still find ways to ILLEGALLY obtain blow. Note the emphasis on ILLEGAL. If the cops catch them, game over, and they will hopefully spend some solid time in the pokey. Of course our justice system sucks and we generally catch-and-release these scum.
Its not like little Jason cares about this fact, he just wants YOUR guns banned because he hates you with the fire of one-thousand suns.
And last is his little tag which I couldn’t help but include:
NRA you have no chokehold on me and I’ll vote against any politician that allows you to control them.
That’s the cool thing about our Republic. You can vote all you want. But you can only LEGALLY vote once (I’m sure Jason hates voter ID laws as much as the next “Progressive” for obvious reasons) which means your vote means statistically nothing. If you can convince a block of friends to vote the same way you can, then you’re a force to be reckoned with.
You can’t, because gun control is horribly unpopular, and you resort to lies like this to “persuade” others.
Meanwhile groups like your much-hated NRA use those pesky things like facts, and we CRUSH you in votes, and in the support of our representatives.
