With Ohio now lifting their restrictions on carrying of firearms in places that serve alcohol, soon the streets will be awash in blood. Thankfully Texas still bans the carrying of guns in bars!
A patron at a topless bar has been arrested in the stabbing death earlier this month of an Oklahoma man who had been escorted out of the club for being intoxicated, police said.
Can you imagine how bad it would be if a gun had been involved!
h/t Bob
Had another great night with the Vicious Circle guys and Gals.
If you didn’t catch it live, download the MP3 here.
Vicious Circle #99 “Shit River”
Thirdpower has a great post up on some anti-gun propaganda from the 90s and a clip from Doogie Howser MD. Go watch it. Even if you weren’t a Doogie fan (I was never interested in it) you’ll remember lots of other shows pushing the same message in the early 90s. This was the high water mark for gun control in America and it would soon become the tipping point. Still what REALLY got me was this quote from the Entertainment Industries Council.
Try emphasizing the fact that introducing a gun into an argument lethalizes anger: What could have been resolved with just harsh words, or even cuts and bruises, may end up with a death. Guns don’t allow for cooling off or reconciling once the momentary or situational anger subsides.
This is a common theme even to gun control advocates today. Guns CAUSE crime, and without guns in people’s hands violent crime and death simply won’t happen because guns make it “Too Easy”. First up we know that’s bullshit, as lots of horrible violent crime is committed with non gun weapons. Some as simple as baseball bats or extension cords, others as ubiquitous as the two hands and feet we all have. Furthermore if guns make killing “Too Easy” why is it the military has such a bitch of a time to get our soldiers to do it? That’s right, first we have a volunteer army so we can assume that weeds out most of the pacifists and people who are appalled by even the most justified violent acts. You give them high quality lethal weapons, and then you take them to a foreign land and tell them not only is it GOOD to kill the enemy, but if one excels at killing the enemy they will be REWARDED.
Yet still the military needs to play mind games so that when a soldier has the enemy in his rifle sights he can overcome the resistance to pull the trigger.
OK so back to the quote above. First I’m just going to ignore “harsh words”. Frankly I’m disappointed that this nation has gone so soft on name-calling and harsh words. Call me any name in the book. It won’t make me feel good, and it won’t make you look like a nice person, but you’ll never physically harm me, and if you don’t physically harm me I’ll go about my day. Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones, but Names will Never Hurt Me! That’s another topic for another day, let’s move on to the next point: The “or even cuts and bruises” part.
I dunno about you but I’m a Registered Republican, gun owner, and generally opinionated guy. Those of you who have met me in person will know that I don’t shy away from controversy any more in person than I do here or on Vicious Circle. I get in heated discussions ALL the time. I won’t lie, I enjoy pushing people to look at issues in different ways and to defend their convictions.
I must say the last time I ever threw a punch in anger was around the time of that Doogie Howser Episode, and I was just barely in my teens. I certainly have never hit anybody in anger since I’ve been a legal adult, and I haven’t had any discussions come to blows in the same period of time. Frankly I chalk the few times I’ve tossed my fists around to Teenage hormonal bravado. I was “young dumb and full of cum” as the maxim goes, but I wasn’t a total idiot. Didn’t take me long to find out that slugging somebody in the nose because they called me an unflattering name or didn’t agree with me on whatever point, didn’t accomplish much at all. And really the ONLY people who that tactic worked for were the ones that did it often, and vicious enough to get others to fear them. Didn’t take me long to figure out that debate was the way to roll and I could save my hands for doing more constructive things.
How about you? Have you ever slugged somebody because of an argument as an adult? Have you ever refrained from voicing your opinion on an issue because of fear of physical harm?
The above statement is phrased so frankly that it sounds like any heated discussion has the strong potential to turn into a physical fight, and certainly adding a gun to one or both of the people discussing an issue will escalate to bloodshed on a very significant level.
But does it? Really, do you see people taking swings at each other over parking spaces, or who should be the next president, or if abortion is murder or not?
Most people are smart enough to know that difference of opinion, or simple rudeness can be resolved by walking away or discussion, rather than physical violence. I would argue that gun owners know that even better because the one thing is correct about that statement is that you can’t shoot somebody “Just a little bit”. Still one thing to add is a statement of support from an unlikely source; Joan Peterson:
That is because they are easy to use and more lethal. You can shoot from a distance and shoot more than once.
You see while most people DO know that violence isn’t the answer to common disputes, there is a minority of people who feel it is perfectly fine to use force to get their will. These are the people you read about in the papers. These are people who have lived by a code of violence since a young age. They shoot people, stab people, beat people, and choke people. They intimidate, they murder, they rape, they rob, and they sell prohibited goods and services. Listen to any Hip-Hop song, or any “Street Thug” talking about life and death. They’ll often claim “Disrespect” as a reason for killing another person.
They must be in a minority, because we still have a population.
But note that if you spend enough time with a person like this, it doesn’t matter if they have a gun, or are bare handed, on a long enough timeline a violent monster like this will kill you if given a chance.
That’s why I carry a gun. I’m a scientist! I’ve spent my life reading books and learning skills, not fighting. I try to keep in good shape, but I’m 30 and definitely have passed my prime. Why do I carry a gun? Well because when I encounter that guy who wants to do me physical harm because I don’t share his opinion, or because I have something he wants that I’m unwilling to give, or in the case of some of the spree shooters, he’s just plain crazy. A gun indeed allows me to pack deadly force, attack at a distance, and shoot multiple times. Joan of course says it like its a bad thing, but there are millions of people out there who were glad to have those odds in their favor when things got ugly.
To further show the mentality of the opposition I thought I’d add these two quotes from Ubu52. She’s a useful idiot, and a crazed loner, but I think her words dovetail nicely with this post:
Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
And
I think its pretty obvious those who wish to ban and restrict personal firearms are punishing the best of society for the behavior of the worst, and furthermore they claim a false hope that somehow “Gun Death” is the only relevant crime, and that without guns these violent predators won’t turn to other tools.
This is why we can’t give an inch!
This is a brutal one.
A California mother was arrested and charged with murder on Tuesday after police said she cooked her baby in a microwave.
Wow…just WOW! How about this for shocking:
Leong said it took several months to determine the child’s burns did indeed come from a microwave, using medical analysis and findings from three other U.S. cases.
Among them was a case involving Dayton, Ohio, woman convicted this year of baking her baby in a microwave.
This is hardly the first time this brutality has happened.
Child welfare workers have since removed Yang’s three boys, who are all under age 7, from her home, Leong said.
Sacramento police said they do not know what would have led Yang to allegedly put her baby in the microwave.
Thankfully the other children have been removed, as this woman WILL kill again. Police don’t know the motive…neither do I…or anybody else I suspect.
Horrible.
Another Friday Night, another Vicious Circle.
Join us live here at 9pm EST!
Its what I have today.
Should have been Friday yesterday, and I should be sitting on my couch playing Call of Duty RIGHT Now!
Bah!
Totally Senseless:
A New York City mother accused of beating her five-year-old son to death admitted that she lashed out at the child after he broke her TV while playing on his Wii video game console, according to prosecutors cited Tuesday in the New York Post…She is accused of beating her oldest child, Jamar Johnson, so badly that he suffered fatal injuries to his chest and stomach.
Initially, she said that she just meant to “pop” her son on the bottom, but over the course of five police interviews, she allegedly admitted she gave him more than just a routine spanking, prosecutors said.
Over a fucking TV! Also I wonder what the actual value of the TV was. When the Wii first came out people were showing that these things can happen, but seriously to kill somebody over?
Also “pop her son on the bottom”? No way that action can translate to a dead child without some ill intent.
Sickening.
h/t Bob
Alan links this little story about the US attempting to foist the Dollar Coin on us. Go read his post because he brings some grade-A snark at calling the “Progressives” on their Jackboot nature.
I just have a personal story. Back in my more Leftist times I LOVED the idea of Dollar Coins. As a matter of fact I bought some Canadian Dollar and Two Dollar coins off a Canadian student at a Band Competition in Northern Maine one year and kept them proudly displayed in my bedroom, as well as my college dorm room. I probably still have them somewhere. I knew that dollar bills had a VERY short service life and quickly wore out and needed to be replaced, often inside of a year or two of service. This cost the treasury money and just seemed like a bad idea when you think of the long service life of coins. I was all for the dollar coin.
Fast forward to my days as a deck hand and bartender on a small tour boat. I was mixing drinks when a gentleman payed for his booze with four Sacagawea dollars. I was excited to finally see some in the wild and I quickly replaced them with four paper bills and put them in the change purse in my wallet.
It took about a day for my love of the dollar coin to die. My pocket felt like a boat anchor, and it was only four bucks! At the time I was making tips tending bar so I’d often have $10-$15 in ones in my wallet. Can you imagine what that would feel like in Brass and Zinc? I couldn’t spend them fast enough.
Dollar coins are like bullpup rifles, they look AWESOME on paper, but as soon as you shoot one you quickly realize why so few people actually make the damn things.
And of course the crux of the story is that the US Mint cranked out the Dollar coins like they were the cure for Cancer, and now they have a huge surplus of coins nobody wants….just like the Susan B Anthony coin. You want something to do with those coins? Melt them and sell the metal.
That’s the best we can do. Dollar Coins suck!
In case you didn’t know JP556 has done Episode 2 of the Empty Mags Podcast.
Looks like he’s hammered out many of the technical problems (you sound great in this one, maybe you should listen to Eric from the Handgun Podcast when he advises people not to go crazy with mic quality that will pick up every dog in your neighborhood barking….or Dennis’ Cockatiel as heard on last week’s VC)
He talks about his S&W Bodyguard .380, as well as cross-eye dominance.
I really enjoyed the eye dominance part a lot, I may try putting some tape on my shooting glasses to see if that does help things along.
For handgun shooting being cross-eye dominant (ie I’m right handed but my left eye is the eye that sees clearly over the sights) is simple, just rotate your strong hand over a half-degree into your body, the gun will be right under your weak-side eye, and you can easily form a two-eye sight picture.
For rifles and shotguns I’ve found two-eye shooting to be a major problem with iron sights. (Using a holographic optic like JP’s Eotech is fine because both eyes will see the point-of-aim, and using a scope only one eye will be able to visualize the reticle) but when I shoulder a rifle or a shotgun with both eyes open, I CLEARLY see the WRONG front post or bead. I thought this might be easier with an aperture sight but it isn’t, the front sight as seen from an angle with my left eye is the clear one.
Right now for quick acquisition combat-type long-gun shooting, or when I’m shooting sporting clays I mount and sight the target with both eyes for a wider field of view and then close my left eye so I can visualize a clean sight picture before initiating my trigger squeeze.
I got one complaint JP, TOO SHORT! Dude I enjoyed every minute of it, but it was just over before I knew it! Maybe add one more topic to fill it out?
I’m starting to think this woman was murdered and dumped in the pool.
The mayor of Fall River says “that health inspectors from the City visited the pool on Monday and on Tuesday and inspected the facilities,” which was during the time that body was believed to be in the water.
It would be a stretch, but you MIGHT be able to convince me that after the pool closed the lifeguards lit up a joint and skipped out on their evening maintenance and cleaning duties, and missed the fact that their was a dead woman on the bottom of the pool. But the HEALTH inspectors? I’d imagine these guys are looking for gross things like poop and dirt, let alone corpses. I think they’d notice if the pool hadn’t been cleaned in a few days and there was a good bit of sand on the bottom, let alone a dead woman. Also:
-She was a dark skinned woman. That means she’d stand out better against the light colored pool than us Crackers.
-She had 3 kids at home, and a long-time boyfriend, yet nobody called the cops when she didn’t come home?
-Supposedly she didn’t know how to swim and had taken a young boy to the pool where she accidentally slipped down a water slide. Kid didn’t pitch a fit when he was all alone? Kid didn’t feel the need to point out the helpless guardian at the bottom of the pool?
If I had to speculate I suspect she was a victim of domestic violence and was dumped.
