So I’m back on the scene and Joan Peterson dropped some pretty bad articles on her twitter feed, so let’s warm up the old Blogger Engine an clean out the cobwebs. Shooter Ready?……BEEP!
The National Rifle Assn. has been so successful at pushing back gun-control laws that it has run out of laws to push back on. Once you can buy all the weapons you want at unrestricted gun shows and pack a pistol in a national park, it is harder to feel your 2nd Amendment rights are being infringed. And this is not good for the NRA because if folks are no longer scared of losing their guns, they might stop sending money to the gun lobby.
Well first up, given that I went on vacation and had to constantly do the disarm, re-arm, go-without gun for today because while I can carry in a Federal Park, to ENTER said park I need to walk through the ranger station which is a Federal Building and a Gun Free Zone, and parts of my travels I would travel on one of my four permits, another part another, some parts you can’t get a permit to carry there, and you have to hope that nothing bad happens because overall nobody follows the firearms owner protection act, and the fact that Wally constantly taunted me while working on my FAL that he’d put threading on the barrel, because even if its left-handed, wide-gauge metric threads that fit no known appliance that would be a crime.
I could go on, but I think if you’re not outraged by our current gun law set up, you either haven’t been paying attention, or want to ban guns, and need to be politically marginalized for the sake of the Republic.
The now-controversial “stand your ground” law in Florida is a fine example of this. Before the legislation was passed, nobody had gotten into serious trouble for using a gun to rightfully defend himself in the Sunshine State.
Kinda neat little situation he’s invented there. Note that in the context he speaks “Rightfully Defend” is a legal term….so if the law doesn’t think you rightfully defended yourself, then you CAN get into serious trouble. Note that even in England nobody gets in serious trouble for “Rightfully Defending” themselves, sure you can shoot an armed intruder in your home after dark and go to prison for longer than the intruder would for his crimes….you see armed self defense isn’t “Rightful” under the Law. There are people who have gone to prison and lost their life savings because they didn’t retreat from a place they had every right to be while being unlawfully attacked…because that was the law.
Of course there’s another part of Stand Your Ground. Let’s have a look at the OJ Simpson Murder case. Juice has since admitted he murdered his ex wife and her boyfriend that day. Put your feelings aside on the OJ and the actual trial. OJ was acquitted on Murder charges. Under the eyes of the law he did NOT kill those two people. Meanwhile the family of the departed sued OJ Civilly and ended up financially ruining OJ.
He didn’t kill them under the law…but he had to pay the family because they died? Now imagine rather than a Hollywood show trial, this is you shooting an ex-con with a butcher knife as he climbs through your bedroom window. This happens all the time in states without protection. You are found in the right for shooting a person, but their family takes your money because you killed them. Even when it isn’t a successful suit, you still have to pay for your lawyers time in court fighting it, and we all know Lawyers don’t come cheap. So his point is generally a lie anyway. People have honest-to-goodness shot somebody in self-defense, and then were financially ruined by civil suits.
Thankfully in many states that’s protected against now. He doesn’t seem to think so, but he doesn’t seem to care for gun owners, and won’t let facts get in the way of his hatred.
Since the law took effect, the number of Florida gun owners killing someone and successfully claiming justifiable homicide has tripled. This means either that a lot of people had been running away before or that quite a few people are now exploiting the law to bump somebody off and then claim self-defense.
He hasn’t read the “Gun Death?” files, has he? Anti-Rights people use the metric of “Gun Death” because it conceals all other non-gun ways people can be killed and harmed. They point out that states and nations with massive gun control and bans have low “Gun Death” (of course they cook those numbers, because places like Chicago the criminals have no issue getting guns, as well as places like Mexico, or the former Soviet states where “Gun Death” is higher than the United States, and people live in modern conditions) because they don’t want to look at the overall violent crime rate.
Trust me, Buddy, the Justifiable homicides went up because people where shooting predators who would have otherwise had their filthy way with them. You’re rooting for the rapists, robbers, and murderers. Good for you! BTW in your next paragraph you talk about Trayvon Martin as if he is certainly innocent. Mind Closed, Mouth Open. You must be a “Progressive”!
It will not happen, of course. The NRA will squash any attempt to cordon off this bold new frontier of firearms freedom that has spread to 24 states and is under consideration in several others. Heck, the NRA folks will not only stand their ground, but they also will probably try to concoct even more creative legislation.
If by “NRA” and “NRA Folks” you mean “The People of the United States of America”, yeah. You see the NRA isn’t jack shit without members, and lobby groups like Joan Peterson’s own Brady Campaign, or Joyce Foundation that have no members, and only have employees, volunteers, and interns that probably number only a few hundred nation-wide for ALL GROUPS, have no power at all.
See what I’m getting at? OK that one’s dead, NEXT!
Of the countless stories we tell ourselves, the American myth of the solitary enforcer of justice may be the most tenacious, beloved and — as the story of George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin has so grievously demonstrated — distorting.
From Clint Eastwood in “Dirty Harry” to Charles Bronson in “Death Wish,” from Robert De Niro practicing his sneer in “Taxi Driver” to comic-book superheroes sheathed in various hues of spandex, whether he is walking tall or falling down, the lone avenger speaks to something deep and abiding within the American psyche, engaging our most cherished ideas about a country founded by brash rebels and sustained by rough-hewn individualism, flinty self-reliance and a congenital suspicion of powerful institutions.
Well there, waste no time going off the reservation, buddy!
He’s right about Americans liking stylized vigilantes. We like the Heroic Old-West Posse, we like Cops that go off the reservation for Justice, we like costumed superheros fighting crime from the shadows.
We also don’t like the Old-West Posse out for a hero. We don’t like crooked cops breaking the law and hiding behind their badges, and we don’t much care for Lynch Mobs.
And I’m still talking Hollywood. Now like most anti-rights people this author has a difficult time distinguishing between Hollywood fantasy and reality. In real life the cop that “Goes Rogue” is either fired, or covered up by the department, and the department gets in trouble if discovered. We no longer have posses, and it is frowned on today if a peace officer Deputize untrained citizens. Old West Lawmen just applied for the job, modern police officers need to go to college and get a degree! Oh and costumed superheros? We have a few of them, and they’re freaks, and generally get arrested because what they do is criminal….if they aren’t breaking the law they’re just dialing 911 while wearing a dumb outfit.
I won’t touch on every film reference, but there are several paragraphs where the author talks about Hollywood as if it is real-life. He’s gonna start passing judgement on real people soon, so keep the mental condition of the judge in mind! I will pick one nit!
As if by popular demand, Eastwood even reprised his Dirty Harry persona with “Gran Torino,” in which he cleverly allowed his poisonously prejudiced character to have his cake and eat it, too: He might have been an epithet-spewing racist, but he ultimately used his swagger for good on behalf of the very immigrants he routinely dismissed with ethnic put-downs.
So not only does he think Hollywood is real, he also don’t even understand the movies he watches? First up if Eastwood did an unofficial Dirty Harry movie it was Blood Work, he was a flinty cop in San Francisco, and he even carried an N-Frame Smith and Wesson in a shoulder holster.
The whole point in Gran Torino was that Eastwood’s Walt Kowalski was a dark and troubled man. You weren’t supposed to envy him and his life, you were supposed to pity him, and be glad for his final redemption and reform. Of course he’s the protagonist so the movie HAS to portray him in a sympathetic light. Big surprise this Author has an affinity for being lead by the nose.
It’s impossible to know whether Zimmerman saw himself in any of these movies as he followed Martin through a gated community in Florida in February. An aspiring police officer who had made nearly 50 calls about suspicious events in his neighborhood over the past eight years, he surely saw himself, like all vigilantes, on the side of right in the battle against crime, decay and disorder.
There’s that judgement I was talking about. See not only does popular movies portray the hearts of Americans, but Zimmerman watched all these movies and was a vigilante that night. Likely false, but this idiot sure thinks its true, and wants you to as well.
These tensions played out in another case of real-life vigilantism that galvanized the nation nearly 30 years ago. In 1984, Bernhard Goetz used an unlicensed gun to shoot four black teen-agers he said were trying to mug him on a New York City subway train. As a dramatic embodiment of the anxieties swirling around race, crime and an ineffectual city government at the time, Goetz was vilified in some corners as a racist. But just as many saw him as a folk hero. The National Rifle Association contributed heavily to Goetz’s defense and used his example to lobby for more liberal concealed carry laws.
The result is that Zimmerman might have indirectly had Goetz to thank for his own license to carry the Kel-Tec PF-9 pistol with which he shot and killed Martin. (For his part, Goetz was acquitted of attempted murder and convicted only of illegal possession of a firearm.)
Who’s the Vigilante now? He notes that Bernhard Goetz was acquitted of the murder charges….but the Author seems convinced that both Goetz and Zimmerman are indeed guilty of murder.
Of course “Progressives” are all cowards and treat others as their slaves. They want the cops to be the vigilantes by making self defense illegal and arresting people protecting their life liberty and property. And they want everybody else to pay for it out of their taxes. So I doubt we’ll see this idiot putting on a hood and getting his Watchmen on. Its good, because if I’m ever minding my own business and I see the Comedian bearing down on me, I’ll be shooting him, and given that being a vigilante is illegal, and I won’t be committing a crime, I’ll be justified.
Ahh that feels good!
