I'm not going to try to recapitulate the horror of last night in Las Vegas where at least 58 people were killed by a single gunman firing from the 32nd floor of a hotel into a crowd of 22,000 at a Jason Aldean concert, the deadliest massacre in modern times. I'm not going to tell you about the gunman because fuck him. Fuck everything about him. Fuck his life. Fuck his death. Fuck everything he ever loved. Fuck him in Hell with the hot barrels of the 18-20 guns and each of the thousands of rounds of ammo he had with him in the Mandalay Bay Hotel.
I don't give a fuck if he was white or brown or plaid. I don't give a fuck if he was ISIS or Nazi or whatever. I don't give a fuck about his brother, who keeps getting interviewed. What I do give a fuck about is that he was able to own that many guns. How the fuck does a nation allow that? How is that rational? How does it make anyone safer? It's aiding and abetting someone's mental illness at some point. He's just a hoarder with a side of intense paranoia and a socio- and/or psychopath.
Not that gun owners care or have any perspective. Let me give you one anecdote before getting to the motherfucking NRA. Lorraine Berry wrote to me this morning: "I'm trapped in a waiting room in Florida waiting for a mammogram. Watching the news and some newsperson asks why the guy did this. I say, 'Because we sell machine guns in this country.' Immediately, 5 women come after me, tell me they love their guns. One owns 6. Immediately start speculating it was Antifa that did this. I cite facts but they accuse me of being emotional...After they thought I had stopped paying attention, they started talking amongst themselves. 'My son-in-law is a registered gun dealer. I know so many people with mental problems that own guns. I don't know how they got through the loopholes. Unless you've been certified, you can buy a gun.' But they're so sure that it's their right to own those guns. Told me it was their constitutional right. They told me they were tired of being 'silenced.' I said, 'You haven't had a gun law passed in a decade. You own Congress. I have no idea how you are the victims here.'"
That feeling of imminent victimhood is what drives the National Rifle Association, a group of vermin that feeds on the corpses of gunshot victims, sucking their blood to boost gun sales and their membership, fostering the mental illness of thousands of Americans, the 3% who own over half the guns in the nation, a group that the dogfucker in Vegas belonged to, and the NRA fans the flames of their madness, telling them, through the cruel, pursed, snarling lips of Dana Loesch, that politicians are gonna send goons to take their guns away, something that has never happened in the modern United States, but it makes them feel like victims, it feeds the paranoia, it pushes them to buy more guns and more ammo.
What a goddamned, pathetic nation this must be for this to be allowed.
Right now, not only is the NRA active in trying to get a bill allowing silencer purchases for any "hunter" or "sportsperson," it's trying to get a decision on a magazine size ban in Maryland overturned. It's celebrating new laws allowing for concealed carry of weapons on college campuses in several states. It's a terrorist organization as sure as ISIS is. The NRA uses fear and violence to promote its political agenda. And it uses shit-tons of money. The NRA leadership is dancing on piles of cash with fresh bodies of people from Las Vegas and with the rotting corpses from Orlando and with the child-sized skeletons of Newtown.
We have to be able to agree that some things are just wrong. If we can't agree, as a society, that the way we have handled the ownership of guns in the United States is a complete catastrophe, we can't move forward. At this point, the proliferation and propagation of guns is like what happens when measles gets into a group of children whose parents have refused to inoculate them. Yeah, your freedom got a bunch of people hurt. Is it worth it?
You should not be allowed to own a bunch of guns. You should not be allowed to own large magazines. You should not be allowed to own semi-automatic or automatic rifles. You should be required to get trained and licensed. You should have to register every gun. You should have to use whatever modern technology is available to make guns safer. You shouldn't be allowed to buy a large amount of ammunition without a special permit. You should have to pass a background check for every purchase. You should have to be certified as not mentally ill. You shouldn't be allowed to have a gun if you have had domestic violence restraining order filed against you.
That's basic, man. Any society that doesn't do that, the bare minimum in the realm of "well-regulated," is a society that has gone insane.
Instead of doing something, Republicans and other conservatives tell us that we shouldn't politicize a shooting (although, you know, ignoring the politics of something is a political act). They tell us that good guys with guns can stop crimes (although I'm not sure how a few thousand people firing at the hotels on the Strip would have helped anyone). They tell us that places like Chicago, with slightly tighter gun laws, have a great deal of gun violence (although most of those guns come from outside Chicago because, apparently, there are roads that go in and out of the city).
They will do anything to protect the delusions of the gun nuts, as well as their filthy campaign war chests.
I have no words of wisdom. I can't offer any comfort. We've all said it all before. We all know what has to be done. But we don't do it.
We are all hostages to the armed and deranged among us.
(Note to complainers: I don't give a fuck today if you think my use of "mentally ill," "crazy," or "insane" is "ableist." I just don't give a fuck today. Save it for tomorrow.)
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query guns. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query guns. Sort by date Show all posts
10/02/2017
7/24/2015
Re-Post: Of Course It's the Guns. It's Always the Guns.
(This is a repost from a month ago because there's very little left to say. One word has been added: Lafayette, which is the Rude Pundit's hometown.)
We know, right? We know that, at the end of the discussion, after we've talked about racism and hatred and mental illness, what remains are the guns. No, you won't get rid of racism and hatred and mental illness by taking the guns away, but nothing will ever get rid of that. Those aren't tangible things. Ideas can't be taken out of someone's hands, alive and warm or cold and dead, melted down, and eliminated.
But guns can be.
Guns amplify the racism, foster hatred, and give an easy outlet to the mentally ill. The sad part is that we know this. We know it to be true. Even the vast majority of people who cling to the belief that only guns can stop guns understand the equation. Easy access to guns means more murder.
But we are so afraid. Politicians are afraid of the NRA. Gun owners are afraid of government power. Everyone is told to be afraid of their neighbors, the black guy walking down the street, the Muslims in front of a mosque. And that fear has made us hold to our guns, if not in actuality then in support of mild laws and compromising politicians.
Yet reality demonstrates again and again that, mostly, the fear is over nothing, over a lie. There's never a good guy with a gun around when you need one. And, no, more guns won't solve that.
This post is absent of facts. It's absent of links. It's absent of stated context, although you know what the reference points are. They have become a mantra of places: Lafayette, Charleston, Newtown, Aurora, and many more already part of the chant and many more to be added.
This blogger has grown weary of the depraved ignorance that has taken the place of rational discussion. He's long been amazed at how people who are wary of the motives of the government they elected don't have any suspicions of the organizations and corporations who only answer to the dollar. Very little surprises him anymore, not even this latest massacre.
It is who we are. It is a price to pay for freedom, we are told. And yet, somehow, we are less and less free.
But guns can be.
Guns amplify the racism, foster hatred, and give an easy outlet to the mentally ill. The sad part is that we know this. We know it to be true. Even the vast majority of people who cling to the belief that only guns can stop guns understand the equation. Easy access to guns means more murder.
But we are so afraid. Politicians are afraid of the NRA. Gun owners are afraid of government power. Everyone is told to be afraid of their neighbors, the black guy walking down the street, the Muslims in front of a mosque. And that fear has made us hold to our guns, if not in actuality then in support of mild laws and compromising politicians.
Yet reality demonstrates again and again that, mostly, the fear is over nothing, over a lie. There's never a good guy with a gun around when you need one. And, no, more guns won't solve that.
This post is absent of facts. It's absent of links. It's absent of stated context, although you know what the reference points are. They have become a mantra of places: Lafayette, Charleston, Newtown, Aurora, and many more already part of the chant and many more to be added.
This blogger has grown weary of the depraved ignorance that has taken the place of rational discussion. He's long been amazed at how people who are wary of the motives of the government they elected don't have any suspicions of the organizations and corporations who only answer to the dollar. Very little surprises him anymore, not even this latest massacre.
It is who we are. It is a price to pay for freedom, we are told. And yet, somehow, we are less and less free.
6/18/2015
Of Course It's the Guns. It's Always the Guns.
We know, right? We know that, at the end of the discussion, after we've talked about racism and hatred and mental illness, what remains are the guns. No, you won't get rid of racism and homophobia and hatred and mental illness by taking the guns away, but nothing will ever get rid of that. Those aren't tangible things. Ideas can't be taken out of someone's hands, alive and warm or cold and dead, melted down, and eliminated.
But guns can be.
Guns amplify the racism and homophobia, foster hatred, and give an easy outlet to the mentally ill. The sad part is that we know this. We know it to be true. Even the vast majority of people who cling to the belief that only guns can stop guns understand the equation. Easy access to guns means more murder.
But we are so afraid. Politicians are afraid of the NRA. Gun owners are afraid of government power. Everyone is told to be afraid of their neighbors, the black guy walking down the street, the Muslims in front of a mosque. And that fear has made us hold to our guns, if not in actuality then in support of mild laws and compromising politicians.
Yet reality demonstrates again and again that, mostly, the fear is over nothing, over a lie. There's never a good guy with a gun around when you need one. And, no, more guns won't solve that.
This post is absent of facts. It's absent of links. It's absent of stated context, although you know what the reference points are. They have become a mantra of places: Charleston, Newtown, Aurora, Orlando, Las Vegas, and many more already part of the chant and many more to be added.
This blogger has grown weary of the depraved ignorance that has taken the place of rational discussion. He's long been amazed at how people who are wary of the motives of the government they elected don't have any suspicions of the organizations and corporations who only answer to the dollar. Very little surprises him anymore, not even this latest massacre.
It is who we are. It is a price to pay for freedom, we are told. And yet, somehow, we are less and less free.
But guns can be.
Guns amplify the racism and homophobia, foster hatred, and give an easy outlet to the mentally ill. The sad part is that we know this. We know it to be true. Even the vast majority of people who cling to the belief that only guns can stop guns understand the equation. Easy access to guns means more murder.
But we are so afraid. Politicians are afraid of the NRA. Gun owners are afraid of government power. Everyone is told to be afraid of their neighbors, the black guy walking down the street, the Muslims in front of a mosque. And that fear has made us hold to our guns, if not in actuality then in support of mild laws and compromising politicians.
Yet reality demonstrates again and again that, mostly, the fear is over nothing, over a lie. There's never a good guy with a gun around when you need one. And, no, more guns won't solve that.
This post is absent of facts. It's absent of links. It's absent of stated context, although you know what the reference points are. They have become a mantra of places: Charleston, Newtown, Aurora, Orlando, Las Vegas, and many more already part of the chant and many more to be added.
This blogger has grown weary of the depraved ignorance that has taken the place of rational discussion. He's long been amazed at how people who are wary of the motives of the government they elected don't have any suspicions of the organizations and corporations who only answer to the dollar. Very little surprises him anymore, not even this latest massacre.
It is who we are. It is a price to pay for freedom, we are told. And yet, somehow, we are less and less free.
6/16/2016
Once Upon a Time, the United States Believed in Genuine Gun Control
Nearly fifty years ago, in the wake of the assassinations of MLK and RFK and not that long after JFK, there was a moment when the United States Congress actually considered, seriously, strict gun control laws. As part of an omnibus crime bill that was debated in June of 1968, shortly after Bobby Kennedy was shot dead, gun registration and licensing was on the table. It was a fascinating debate in the nation, with bizarro bedfellows, as well as organizations and the media taking stands that not only seem surprising now, but are considered downright un-American in many quarters.
In a cover story on Time magazine for June 21, 1968 was "The Gun Under Fire," with a Roy Lichtenstein image of a gun pointing at the reader. The article contains a paragraph that is unthinkable in a mainstream magazine today: "High on the list of reforms sought by many gun-control advocates is a system of dual registration, similar to the one for autos. The driver is licensed, and his vehicle is registered separately. The same principle could apply to guns - licensing for the owner, registration for each of his firearms. It would be a nuisance, to be sure, but, given the destructive power of guns, it would hardly be an outrageous imposition in an industrial society that demands registration of cars, businesses, private planes, dogs and marriages, as well as prescriptions for many mild drugs. Even the Bedouins of Jordan, rootless wanderers and fierce individualists all, are required to register their rifles with desert police."
The attitude there is one of "No shit. What kind of assholes wouldn't agree to this?"
In fact, the Republican Governors Conference approved of greater gun control in their June meeting in 1968, and the U.S. Mayors Conference recommended banning handgun ownership for anyone but law enforcement. The thinking among many conservatives was that the gun nuts were fucking everything up for the hunters. And a majority of Americans, 84%, supported strong gun control legislation.
One extraordinary moment was President Lyndon Johnson's message to Congress on gun control as the bill was being debated. "I propose, first, the national registration of every gun in America," Johnson said. "Registration will tell us how many guns there are, where they are, and in whose hands they are held." He also proposed licensing. And, in case anyone wanted to fuck with the man with the big dick, he continued, "Nothing in these proposals will impair the legitimate ownership or use of guns in this country...Nor are they threats to the mystique of manhood or to the heritage of our people...The only heritage that is harmed is the record of violent death and destruction that shames our history."
If President Obama even hinted at this, he would be lynched faster than you can say, "NRA." But here we were, in a time when we were allowed to talk about everything up to and including confiscation of and outlawing handguns.
In the end, this debate was the event that made the NRA shift into full-on batshit paranoia. And the organization had some interesting partners in this. The Black Panthers, for example, feared that registration would allow their guns to be confiscated. Leftists wanted to be able to keep their guns as self-defense against the "abundantly armed" state. Sounds horribly familiar, no?
The gun control law that did pass contained some provisions about the sale and transfer of firearms, but, as LBJ admitted after signing it, it fell far, far short of what he felt was needed. Of course, these days, those provisions about the importation and shipping of certain guns would be considered an attempt to go into a gun owner's home, kill their family, rape their dog, and take their guns out of their cold, dead asses. Not necessarily in that order.
Since then, the whole window of what can be accomplished on gun control has closed more and more. We once could get an assault weapons ban or a waiting period. Now, even after yesterday's really beautiful filibuster by a large number of senators, the best we can hope for is that the people on the perverse (and punitive) terrorist watch list will be prevented from buying guns and maybe expanded background checks. Registration and licensing is not something you can even bring up without being considered an insane radical. We have devolved since the 1960s. And we can barely conceive of reducing the number of guns.
Oh, one more thing about 1968. On May 27, just 10 days before his murder, Robert Kennedy was speaking in Roseburg, Oregon, and good many people in the crowd were angry at his support of gun control measures. Kennedy was booed as he defended the proposals. One man told Kennedy that he was against gun control because "Nazi Germany started with the registration of guns." Yeah, nothing's new. Nothing. Kennedy's caravan would head south, down the West Coast, towards his nearly inevitable end.
In a cover story on Time magazine for June 21, 1968 was "The Gun Under Fire," with a Roy Lichtenstein image of a gun pointing at the reader. The article contains a paragraph that is unthinkable in a mainstream magazine today: "High on the list of reforms sought by many gun-control advocates is a system of dual registration, similar to the one for autos. The driver is licensed, and his vehicle is registered separately. The same principle could apply to guns - licensing for the owner, registration for each of his firearms. It would be a nuisance, to be sure, but, given the destructive power of guns, it would hardly be an outrageous imposition in an industrial society that demands registration of cars, businesses, private planes, dogs and marriages, as well as prescriptions for many mild drugs. Even the Bedouins of Jordan, rootless wanderers and fierce individualists all, are required to register their rifles with desert police."
The attitude there is one of "No shit. What kind of assholes wouldn't agree to this?"
In fact, the Republican Governors Conference approved of greater gun control in their June meeting in 1968, and the U.S. Mayors Conference recommended banning handgun ownership for anyone but law enforcement. The thinking among many conservatives was that the gun nuts were fucking everything up for the hunters. And a majority of Americans, 84%, supported strong gun control legislation.
One extraordinary moment was President Lyndon Johnson's message to Congress on gun control as the bill was being debated. "I propose, first, the national registration of every gun in America," Johnson said. "Registration will tell us how many guns there are, where they are, and in whose hands they are held." He also proposed licensing. And, in case anyone wanted to fuck with the man with the big dick, he continued, "Nothing in these proposals will impair the legitimate ownership or use of guns in this country...Nor are they threats to the mystique of manhood or to the heritage of our people...The only heritage that is harmed is the record of violent death and destruction that shames our history."
If President Obama even hinted at this, he would be lynched faster than you can say, "NRA." But here we were, in a time when we were allowed to talk about everything up to and including confiscation of and outlawing handguns.
In the end, this debate was the event that made the NRA shift into full-on batshit paranoia. And the organization had some interesting partners in this. The Black Panthers, for example, feared that registration would allow their guns to be confiscated. Leftists wanted to be able to keep their guns as self-defense against the "abundantly armed" state. Sounds horribly familiar, no?
The gun control law that did pass contained some provisions about the sale and transfer of firearms, but, as LBJ admitted after signing it, it fell far, far short of what he felt was needed. Of course, these days, those provisions about the importation and shipping of certain guns would be considered an attempt to go into a gun owner's home, kill their family, rape their dog, and take their guns out of their cold, dead asses. Not necessarily in that order.
Since then, the whole window of what can be accomplished on gun control has closed more and more. We once could get an assault weapons ban or a waiting period. Now, even after yesterday's really beautiful filibuster by a large number of senators, the best we can hope for is that the people on the perverse (and punitive) terrorist watch list will be prevented from buying guns and maybe expanded background checks. Registration and licensing is not something you can even bring up without being considered an insane radical. We have devolved since the 1960s. And we can barely conceive of reducing the number of guns.
Oh, one more thing about 1968. On May 27, just 10 days before his murder, Robert Kennedy was speaking in Roseburg, Oregon, and good many people in the crowd were angry at his support of gun control measures. Kennedy was booed as he defended the proposals. One man told Kennedy that he was against gun control because "Nazi Germany started with the registration of guns." Yeah, nothing's new. Nothing. Kennedy's caravan would head south, down the West Coast, towards his nearly inevitable end.
10/05/2017
Fuck You, Steve Scalise
Before he was shot and nearly killed in June, Representative Steve Scalise was a motherfucker on cultural issues. How much of a motherfucker was he? His security detail as Majority Whip in the House of Representatives included Capitol Officer Crystal Griner. Griner and another officer, David Bailey, were injured saving Scalise, with Griner being shot in the ankle. Scalise released a statement specifically thanking the two: "I am especially grateful to Crystal and David, who I have been blessed to have by my side day in and day out in my job as Majority Whip. I would not be here today without the bravery of Crystal and David. They saved my life, and are my heroes."
That's right. For three years, since he was elected Majority Whip, the Louisiana Republican has had Crystal Griner by his side. Griner, as you may have heard, is a lesbian who is married to, wait for it, a woman.
Being a nutzoid Christian, Steve Scalise has spent a good chunk of his career blocking the rights of the woman who put her safety on the line for him and, as he said, saved his life. On his official congressional web page, it brags, "Congressman Scalise has worked diligently throughout his career to protect traditional marriage. Scalise has co-sponsored legislation to amend the Constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman. As a member of the Louisiana State Legislature, Congressman Scalise authored a similar amendment to the Louisiana Constitution that protects traditional marriage."
So he was being protected by someone whose happiness he sought to prevent. That's how much of a motherfucker he was. And now, after the shooting, after he was saved by Griner, he's even more of a motherfucker because he's going right back to fucking mothers.
One of his first big public appearances will be at the hategasm known as the Values Voters Summit. That's a gathering of homophobic Jesus-fellaters who rant for a couple of days at a DC hotel about how fucked the nation is, how much they hate libtards, the poors, and the darks, and how Donald Trump's shit tastes like delicious chocolate pie. It's sponsored by the mad Family Research Council (motto: "Proud to be labeled a hate group"), whose "Human Sexuality" page makes you think that LGBTQ Americans are essentially Isis in better clothes and that the Obergefell decision legalizing same-sex marriage is the day God puked.
Yeah, in a royal "Fuck you, my real savior," Scalise is gonna speak to these dipshits.
And before you say, "Oh, wait, he might say something about a change of heart."
After I stopped laughing at how adorable you are, I'd point out that in his first post-hospitalization interviews this week, Scalise has said that his being shot and all those people in Las Vegas being killed has only strengthened his desire to stick his dick into a shotgun barrel and fuck it.
On Fox "news," Scalise was firm about his bullshit, dangerous interpretation of the 2nd Amendment: "I think it's fortified it because first of all, you've got to recognize that when there is a tragedy like this, the first thing we should be thinking about is praying for the people who were injured and doing whatever we can to help them, to help law enforcement. We shouldn't be first thinking of promoting our political agenda." And then, like so many fucking idiots talking about guns, he brought up how law enforcement has guns, which no one is saying should change: "Frankly what I experienced was when there was a shooter, luckily we had Capitol Police there with their own guns. Every single day in America regular citizens that just have a passionate belief in the Second Amendment, who have their own guns, use guns every single day to protect themselves against criminals...that's a different side of the story that I think is important. People use guns way more to defend themselves against criminals than criminals use guns to hurt people."
Oh, go fuck yourself with your own shattered pelvis, you fucking blind shitheel. First of all, Griner and Bailey didn't have "their own guns." They had department-issued guns. And, you dumb motherfucker, guns harm more people than they help, as study after study after study has shown. And you can't just compare crimes committed versus crimes stopped; you better throw in accidents, suicides, and more in there or you're just a lying son of a bitch.
Did anyone really think that Scalise, who comes from a gerrymandered district in deep red Louisiana, David Duke country and the creepy-ass area where the first season of True Detective took place combined, would gain wisdom and perspective from learning what exactly bullets can do to a body? C'mon. He could have taken ten bullets and watched his whole family be shot and all of them saved by a group of gay EMTs and not a goddamn thought of transformation would enter his depraved fucking head. A bought and paid for whore knows that he's gotta keep working for his pimp. He gets no sympathy. He doesn't get a pass for his pain when he wants so many others to suffer.
Welcome back, Steve Scalise, and fuck you endlessly.
That's right. For three years, since he was elected Majority Whip, the Louisiana Republican has had Crystal Griner by his side. Griner, as you may have heard, is a lesbian who is married to, wait for it, a woman.
Being a nutzoid Christian, Steve Scalise has spent a good chunk of his career blocking the rights of the woman who put her safety on the line for him and, as he said, saved his life. On his official congressional web page, it brags, "Congressman Scalise has worked diligently throughout his career to protect traditional marriage. Scalise has co-sponsored legislation to amend the Constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman. As a member of the Louisiana State Legislature, Congressman Scalise authored a similar amendment to the Louisiana Constitution that protects traditional marriage."
So he was being protected by someone whose happiness he sought to prevent. That's how much of a motherfucker he was. And now, after the shooting, after he was saved by Griner, he's even more of a motherfucker because he's going right back to fucking mothers.
One of his first big public appearances will be at the hategasm known as the Values Voters Summit. That's a gathering of homophobic Jesus-fellaters who rant for a couple of days at a DC hotel about how fucked the nation is, how much they hate libtards, the poors, and the darks, and how Donald Trump's shit tastes like delicious chocolate pie. It's sponsored by the mad Family Research Council (motto: "Proud to be labeled a hate group"), whose "Human Sexuality" page makes you think that LGBTQ Americans are essentially Isis in better clothes and that the Obergefell decision legalizing same-sex marriage is the day God puked.
Yeah, in a royal "Fuck you, my real savior," Scalise is gonna speak to these dipshits.
And before you say, "Oh, wait, he might say something about a change of heart."
After I stopped laughing at how adorable you are, I'd point out that in his first post-hospitalization interviews this week, Scalise has said that his being shot and all those people in Las Vegas being killed has only strengthened his desire to stick his dick into a shotgun barrel and fuck it.
On Fox "news," Scalise was firm about his bullshit, dangerous interpretation of the 2nd Amendment: "I think it's fortified it because first of all, you've got to recognize that when there is a tragedy like this, the first thing we should be thinking about is praying for the people who were injured and doing whatever we can to help them, to help law enforcement. We shouldn't be first thinking of promoting our political agenda." And then, like so many fucking idiots talking about guns, he brought up how law enforcement has guns, which no one is saying should change: "Frankly what I experienced was when there was a shooter, luckily we had Capitol Police there with their own guns. Every single day in America regular citizens that just have a passionate belief in the Second Amendment, who have their own guns, use guns every single day to protect themselves against criminals...that's a different side of the story that I think is important. People use guns way more to defend themselves against criminals than criminals use guns to hurt people."
Oh, go fuck yourself with your own shattered pelvis, you fucking blind shitheel. First of all, Griner and Bailey didn't have "their own guns." They had department-issued guns. And, you dumb motherfucker, guns harm more people than they help, as study after study after study has shown. And you can't just compare crimes committed versus crimes stopped; you better throw in accidents, suicides, and more in there or you're just a lying son of a bitch.
Did anyone really think that Scalise, who comes from a gerrymandered district in deep red Louisiana, David Duke country and the creepy-ass area where the first season of True Detective took place combined, would gain wisdom and perspective from learning what exactly bullets can do to a body? C'mon. He could have taken ten bullets and watched his whole family be shot and all of them saved by a group of gay EMTs and not a goddamn thought of transformation would enter his depraved fucking head. A bought and paid for whore knows that he's gotta keep working for his pimp. He gets no sympathy. He doesn't get a pass for his pain when he wants so many others to suffer.
Welcome back, Steve Scalise, and fuck you endlessly.
12/06/2012
Bob Costas, Guns, and America the Wimpy:
In one of the least informative interviews you'll ever watch or read, sportscaster Bob Costas went on Bill O'Reilly's Geriatric Yowl of Misplaced Justice on Fox "news" last night to "clarify" his Sunday comments on the murder-suicide committed by football player Jovan Belcher. See, Costas quoted from a column by Jason Whitlock that said, in part, "If Jovan Belcher didn't possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins [Belcher's girlfriend who he murdered] would both be alive today." Whitlock also went after what he called America's "gun culture," which, to be precise, is pretty much one of the defining attributes of America to the world.
And because it defines America, if you suggest that perhaps, maybe, please, that a sensible law or two might prevent some of the violence caused by guns, you are automatically a radical asshole who wants to pry the gun out of Charlton Heston's cold, dead hands, repeal the Second Amendment, and hand over your possessions to Barack Obama's U.N. stormtroopers. So everyone piled on Costas, who stood by his remarks. The only thing Costas has said that was backtracking a bit was that he wished he had taken more time to have a more nuanced discussion and that he didn't agree with Whitlock on everything, such as when Whitlock said, "The NRA is the new KKK."
One of the lead stories on the Fox "news" website right now is headlined "After Obama re-election, gun owners clinging to Second Amendment." It is one of those revealing looks on how we're just a nation of pussies, clinging to our guns in case those black helicopters ever land in our backyards (note: they won't) or that you get to take out the guy shooting up the schoolyard (note: you won't). Apparently, between the Mayan apocalypse and Obama's reelection, people are buying guns more guns than ever. One gun store owner said, "It is through the roof, absolutely. Assault rifle-style guns, the black guns, are doing especially well." Of course, an Uzi probably would not be effective against an enraged Quezacotl, but, hey, whatever makes you feel tough.
There's nothing controversial in what Costas said. We do live in a gun culture. We do live in a nation where millions of people carry guns. And we live in a nation where very little is done to prevent the ownership of most kinds of guns. To suggest that Costas was doing anything out of the ordinary, in the wake of a tragedy where you might think the subject would be up for discussion, is to feel so threatened by anyone opposing you that you just wanna shoot them. And there's the problem, Florida. Our rhetoric on guns has shifted so far to the right that to merely question the culture is to assault it, and those who do so must be silenced.
Talking to O'Reilly, Costas eventually wore out the host so that he would stop interrupting every goddamn second, and he offered, "I cannot think of a single instance involving a professional athlete whereby that athlete having a gun averted or diminished a dangerous situation. But I can give you a long list of tragedies that came about because guys were packing."
In one of the least informative interviews you'll ever watch or read, sportscaster Bob Costas went on Bill O'Reilly's Geriatric Yowl of Misplaced Justice on Fox "news" last night to "clarify" his Sunday comments on the murder-suicide committed by football player Jovan Belcher. See, Costas quoted from a column by Jason Whitlock that said, in part, "If Jovan Belcher didn't possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins [Belcher's girlfriend who he murdered] would both be alive today." Whitlock also went after what he called America's "gun culture," which, to be precise, is pretty much one of the defining attributes of America to the world.
And because it defines America, if you suggest that perhaps, maybe, please, that a sensible law or two might prevent some of the violence caused by guns, you are automatically a radical asshole who wants to pry the gun out of Charlton Heston's cold, dead hands, repeal the Second Amendment, and hand over your possessions to Barack Obama's U.N. stormtroopers. So everyone piled on Costas, who stood by his remarks. The only thing Costas has said that was backtracking a bit was that he wished he had taken more time to have a more nuanced discussion and that he didn't agree with Whitlock on everything, such as when Whitlock said, "The NRA is the new KKK."
One of the lead stories on the Fox "news" website right now is headlined "After Obama re-election, gun owners clinging to Second Amendment." It is one of those revealing looks on how we're just a nation of pussies, clinging to our guns in case those black helicopters ever land in our backyards (note: they won't) or that you get to take out the guy shooting up the schoolyard (note: you won't). Apparently, between the Mayan apocalypse and Obama's reelection, people are buying guns more guns than ever. One gun store owner said, "It is through the roof, absolutely. Assault rifle-style guns, the black guns, are doing especially well." Of course, an Uzi probably would not be effective against an enraged Quezacotl, but, hey, whatever makes you feel tough.
There's nothing controversial in what Costas said. We do live in a gun culture. We do live in a nation where millions of people carry guns. And we live in a nation where very little is done to prevent the ownership of most kinds of guns. To suggest that Costas was doing anything out of the ordinary, in the wake of a tragedy where you might think the subject would be up for discussion, is to feel so threatened by anyone opposing you that you just wanna shoot them. And there's the problem, Florida. Our rhetoric on guns has shifted so far to the right that to merely question the culture is to assault it, and those who do so must be silenced.
Talking to O'Reilly, Costas eventually wore out the host so that he would stop interrupting every goddamn second, and he offered, "I cannot think of a single instance involving a professional athlete whereby that athlete having a gun averted or diminished a dangerous situation. But I can give you a long list of tragedies that came about because guys were packing."
5/31/2022
Uvalde, the Southern Baptist Church, and the Murderous, Traumatizing Failure of Conservative Ideology
What do you do when your belief system allows for the murder and rape of children? What do you do when the things that the leaders you trust have said to you, messages their media figures have inundated you with, when the outcome of that is the destruction of kids? A sane person would want to repent, get out, try to change. But we are a nation filled with incoherent rage and fuck-everyone-but-me-and-mine madness. Lemme explain.
In Texas, the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District has a police department. According to its webpage, "The primary goal for the Uvalde CISD Police Department is to maintain a safe and secure environment for our future leaders to learn and our current leaders to educate while forming partnerships with students, teachers, parents, and the community while enforcing laws and reducing fears." Do you understand that? Like many places around the country, the schools have their own cops. And, in nearly every case of a school shooting, the cops or security officers failed to even hinder the shooter.
Like so many things about Uvalde, it demonstrates the utter failure of all the ludicrous bullshit that conservatives throw at us. The Uvalde cops were shit-scared, even with the military equipment they had, pictured looking so goddamned tough, just more security theatre, which is about 75% of American policing, all screaming and tasers and shooting unarmed people. But the truth is that the fucking guns, man, the fucking guns are too much for them. They pissed themselves rather than risk their lives. It's disgraceful and disgusting and all of the cops who stood outside the classroom or sat in their cars should be fired. If they have any self-respect left at all, they should quit first.
Also, look at the Preventive Security Measures document for the UCISD. Robb Elementary "has fencing that encloses the campus [and] is designed to limit and/or restrict access to individuals without a need to be on the campus." It advises, "Teachers are instructed to keep their classroom doors closed and locked at all times." Do you understand that part?
They fucking were supposed to do it all, all those things that conservatives say schools need in order to be secure in our fucked beyond fucked post-Columbine, post-Newtown nation. Good guys with guns. Extra security. It was all there and it didn't fucking matter because the one factor that got those 19 kids and two teachers slaughtered was the guns, and we have a crazed minority in this country with a fuckton of cash that prevents anything from being done about the goddamn guns when most of the country knows that it's the guns, even most of those who say it's not the guns know it's the fuckin' guns.
Every cop organization in the country should be agitating for military-style rifles to be banned and that there should be more laws restricting gun ownership. If not, you're saying that you don't give a shit that your officers are gonna get killed, too. Or that they shouldn't try to stop an armed fucknut from slaughtering kids.
The United States has failed its children. We have decided that it’s better to be armed than worry about the occasional massacre. We have decided that it’s better that the seas rise and the temperatures soar and the droughts and fires wreak destruction than to actually do the work of moving off fossil fuels. And how many churches need to cover up massive sex crimes against children before we start treating them like a criminal enterprise, like the Mafia with an omerta against ratting out child rapists. What more do you want to do to kids?
And what of this conservative ideology that is supposed to be about protecting children within the bounds of traditional family, within a traditional public education system, within the churches that are supposed to inculcate traditional values? If that ideology has led to piles of murdered children inside classrooms, if it has led to thousands of children being raped by leaders in the Southern Baptist Church, the very heart of the evangelical movement that has so poisoned this country and whose leaders are treated like sages instead of pariahs, then that ideology is corrupt and profane and debased. It needs to be burned to the ground, degraded to the point where all who so much as whisper its tenets are seen as fools who need to be banished to the political and social hinterlands until and unless they scourge themselves clean.
You right-wing motherfuckers spent time banning books about gender identity and banning lessons in the cruel history of the United States, a savage heritage that you are doing nothing to counter. You decided it was more important to get gay and lesbian teachers out of schools than it was to keep weapons of war out of people’s hands. You should be forced to live in a classroom with the ripped apart bodies of 19 children rotting in front of you. You goddamned ghouls should never get a moment’s peace or happiness the rest of your miserable, cocksucking lives.
And if you believe that a kid saying she’s transgender is worse than a school shooting, you should never be allowed to comment in public again. I mean, Jesus fuck, the kids from Robb Elementary are turning to GoFundMe to pay for the therapy they'll need. It's trauma and cruelty on top of trauma and cruelty. Anyone who thinks that's okay should never be allowed near children, let alone writing policy that affects them.
I have written so much about guns, so much about Christian fundamentalism, and I don’t know if I’m repeating myself anymore. Post-Reagan conservatism is, at its heart, at its base, a death wish because of the insane adherence to fundamentalist Christianity, which sees our time on earth as a way station before the bliss of the grave when your soul can join Jesus. Of course the guns don’t matter. Of course the deaths of children don’t matter. Why, those kids are lucky that they get to be with Christ so soon and not suffer all the awful sins of existing as a physical being. If you’re bathed in the blood of Christ, then what does it matter if your blood bathes the walls of the elementary school. It's madness, and it should be treated as madness.
Democrats shouldn’t be afraid of talking about what complete, breathtakingly fucked hypocrites Republicans are. They call us “groomers”? Please, SBC. They call us baby killers? They call themselves “pro-life”? It’s a fucking joke. They’re a fucking joke. Go after guns. Go after evangelicals. And stop trying to say there are any "good" Republicans. Just because Liz Cheney hates Donald Trump doesn't mean that she's a motherfucking hero. She's gonna vote for more guns and fewer voting rights and more abortion restrictions and bans. Fuck her. Destroy the word "Republican." Wreck "conservative." Make it poisonous because it is. We have thousands of dead and traumatized children to prove it.
One day, perhaps, in a future that I’m not sure is going to happen, historians will hopefully look back on this era and write new textbooks for kids at school. Those textbooks will hopefully talk about how a cabal of wealthy fucks tried to hide the past from its children while at the same time allowing those same children to live in a nation that requires them to learn how to attempt to survive being massacred in their classroom. Those historians will hopefully teach the kids of the future the cruelty of the leaders who thought a book about being gay was more obscene than children's bodies being shredded by bullets. And those historians will hopefully say that this was just a continuation of the very violence and hatred at the core of America's story, that what those terrible people were trying to hide was themselves.
If we don't do better, if we don't take this anger we have right now, this despair, this sorrow and turn it into action, then we deserve to be a footnote in that history. And that footnote will say that we knew that an ideology of hatred and violence was ruining another generation, yet we still failed to do everything we could to stop it. We failed to save ourselves or our kids.
Let's not be like the Uvalde cops.
2/12/2015
Pennsylvania Town Erects the Most Redundant Sign in the Nation
A week ago, Conoy Township, located in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania - you know, the place where everyone goes to gawk at the Amish like its a freak show and then eat their yummy baked goods - started erecting signs on every road leading into town:
That says, "Welcome to Conoy Twp. This is not a gun free zone." First of all, if you don't put a fuckin' hyphen between "gun" and "free," as in "gun-free," then your sign could be interpreted to be saying the exact opposite of what you're intending, as in "not a free zone for guns." Also, it's America, motherfuckers. No town is free of guns. If your town doesn't have guns, put up a goddamn sign to announce that. Otherwise, we all understand that you have guns.
That fine gentleman holding onto the sign like it's a giraffe's dick is Conoy Township Supervisor Stephen Mohr, who came up with the brilliant idea. He took it to the board of supervisors who, probably thinking, "Christ, just fuckin' do what Steve wants or we'll never hear the end of it," voted unanimously to erect them. Said Mohr, "You have to realize that to most people in this township, God, guns, family and friends are the four most important things." Imagine that thought process: In between going to church, shooting shit, and masturbating to stump porn, a light bulb went off in Mohr's head: "Obama is gonna take our guns. We need our guns because of all the meth around here. Let's let the bad guys know shit'll get real if they fuck with Conoy."
Local attorney (and the rude tipster on this story) Mitchell Sommers wrote in the local paper, "[I]t flirts with vigilantism. It’s a public declaration of defiance, made with township money, without any sense of whether the residents of the township even wanted this." As Sommers points out, they do have cops in Conoy. Those cops do, in fact, have guns.
Yesterday, a tragedy happened and someone vandalized the signs:
Other signs had peace symbols or the word "not" painted on them, although the Borat-like joke there seems odd. Steve Mohr knows what's up. He knows who is responsible: "That tells me their grandparents were at Woodstock...They are probably from the left wing, liberal-thinking and against guns." Indeed. Never fear the hippies, though. Fine Conroyvians have already cleaned the paint from the signs.
By the way, Conoy is taking vandalemons and making vandalemonade. Yeah, the town is looking into copyrighting the message and selling merch to individuals and other cities for a tidy profit for the town.
Also, Mohr is delighted that the British newspaper the Daily Mail picked up the story. In a fundamental misunderstanding of other countries, Mohr opined, "Those people are envious of us. They are not allowed to have firearms."
Yes, certainly, England wants thousands more gun murders. They are so jealous.
That says, "Welcome to Conoy Twp. This is not a gun free zone." First of all, if you don't put a fuckin' hyphen between "gun" and "free," as in "gun-free," then your sign could be interpreted to be saying the exact opposite of what you're intending, as in "not a free zone for guns." Also, it's America, motherfuckers. No town is free of guns. If your town doesn't have guns, put up a goddamn sign to announce that. Otherwise, we all understand that you have guns.
That fine gentleman holding onto the sign like it's a giraffe's dick is Conoy Township Supervisor Stephen Mohr, who came up with the brilliant idea. He took it to the board of supervisors who, probably thinking, "Christ, just fuckin' do what Steve wants or we'll never hear the end of it," voted unanimously to erect them. Said Mohr, "You have to realize that to most people in this township, God, guns, family and friends are the four most important things." Imagine that thought process: In between going to church, shooting shit, and masturbating to stump porn, a light bulb went off in Mohr's head: "Obama is gonna take our guns. We need our guns because of all the meth around here. Let's let the bad guys know shit'll get real if they fuck with Conoy."
Local attorney (and the rude tipster on this story) Mitchell Sommers wrote in the local paper, "[I]t flirts with vigilantism. It’s a public declaration of defiance, made with township money, without any sense of whether the residents of the township even wanted this." As Sommers points out, they do have cops in Conoy. Those cops do, in fact, have guns.
Yesterday, a tragedy happened and someone vandalized the signs:
Other signs had peace symbols or the word "not" painted on them, although the Borat-like joke there seems odd. Steve Mohr knows what's up. He knows who is responsible: "That tells me their grandparents were at Woodstock...They are probably from the left wing, liberal-thinking and against guns." Indeed. Never fear the hippies, though. Fine Conroyvians have already cleaned the paint from the signs.
By the way, Conoy is taking vandalemons and making vandalemonade. Yeah, the town is looking into copyrighting the message and selling merch to individuals and other cities for a tidy profit for the town.
Also, Mohr is delighted that the British newspaper the Daily Mail picked up the story. In a fundamental misunderstanding of other countries, Mohr opined, "Those people are envious of us. They are not allowed to have firearms."
Yes, certainly, England wants thousands more gun murders. They are so jealous.
5/27/2014
Random Observations in the Wake of the Isla Vista Shooting Spree
1. Before YouTube took them down, the Rude Pundit watched a few of Elliot Rodger's non-"Day of Reckoning" videos. Rodger, who, as we know, went on a shooting rampage in Isla Vista, near the University of California-Santa Barbara, on Saturday, was fond of filming from his car. With what we know now, it's as if Son of Sam had been able to tweet updates on his stalking. Context is everything, of course. What was once an innocuous, if odd, video of the view through the windshield while Rodger drives down the highway, "Walking on Sunshine" by Katrina and the Waves playing on the radio, becomes a tense, wordless journey into a deranged mind straight out of a horror film.
More genuinely disturbing is Rodger parked at the beach, staring at a couple who are kissing, commenting on how supremely jealous he is of them. Actually, more precisely, he was jealous of the man because he was going to kiss a "beautiful woman" and have sex with her while Rodger talked about how he was denied it. It's a preview of his longer video that he recorded a couple of days later just before he killed six people and himself. Once again, Rodger's view of the world was framed and distant, his understanding of men and women so juvenile and yet so culturally mainstream. The man "has" the woman. Rodger does not. The woman wants to be had by men, just not by Rodger. It's that simple.
1a. Of course, he was driving a BMW.
2. Once, the Rude Pundit was sitting around with male friends, and one of them said how his brother had hit his girlfriend. All of us thought that was messed up. "There should be a 'guy squad,'" the Rude Pundit said, "a group of men who show up whenever a man does something that makes men in general look bad and just beat the shit out of him for fucking it up for the rest of us." We all agreed: when a man acts violently to women, he makes all men look bad. Still, we should shut the fuck up and take our lumps and not try to weasel our way out by saying dumb shit, like #NotAllMen, because you just look like a desperate tool.
Instead, we should ask, with great despondency and self-reflection, "Oh, white straight American men, what has gone so deeply wrong with you? Are you that scared of losing your power that you feel you must lash out with vicious words and acts against women in order to exert control? Do you feel you are owed sex and must punish the bodies of the women if they refuse? And, if so, how the fuck can you stop yourselves before you kill again?"
3. Of course, Elliot Rodger was mentally ill. Of course, we should do more for the mentally ill. Sure, fine, let's have this debate again. So, conservatives, how about boosting mental health coverage under Obamacare and changing laws to make it harder for people with psychological issues to even buy guns? No? Then why are you even talking?
4. The Rude Pundit has discussed before his complicated relationship with guns. The short version is that he pointed a loaded pistol at a door that an intruder was attempting to open; he threatened to shoot, making the intruder run away. (If you want to know the full story, you can buy his book.) He knows someone who carries a gun on him who went on a weekend to his small office building. There, a man who was robbing the place came charging at him with a metal pipe. He shot the guy in the leg. In both these cases, having a gun may have saved the life of the gun holder.
Today, Samuel Wurzelbacher, the idiot loser once known as "Joe the Plumber," wrote that while he is sorry for the losses of the loved ones of the deceased, "[Y]our dead kids don’t trump my Constitutional rights," before going on to explain to those parents why he needs to protect his family.
Listen: while numbers are hard to come by on the number of people "saved" by guns, as well as the total number of gun-related injuries, it's not a stretch to think that a whole fuck of a lot more people are harmed by guns than helped by them. Last year, over 30 people a day were killed by guns in the United States. If 30 people a day were saved by waving their guns around, you can bet we'd hear about it. Shit, we hear about it whenever someone does so (the Rude Pundit didn't make the newspaper, but the other person mentioned above did).
Here's the rudest thing this writer can say: If guns hadn't been legal, the Rude Pundit wouldn't have had a gun that night very long ago. He doesn't know what would have happened. He might have lived, he might have died, no one can tell. But if his death or injury would have meant that 10 kids wouldn't have died because their irresponsible asshole parents couldn't keep guns in the home, well, what's so fucking special about him? If the Rude Pundit may have died because people didn't have access to guns, but a dozen, two dozen, a hundred other people would be alive, he would gladly have taken on the intruder.
See, the NRA and all the gun fellaters across the political spectrum have it wrong (and Richard Martinez, who spoke so heartbreakingly about his son who was gunned down by Elliot Rodger, has it right): Your guns are far more likely to harm someone innocent than to ever protect you from the bad guys. You are more likely to be a bad guy than you are to stop one. You are more likely to kill yourself with your gun than kill someone else. Your fantasy need for defense shouldn't trump everyone else's need to live safely in the real world.
That we don't believe that as a nation demonstrates how fucked up we are.
More genuinely disturbing is Rodger parked at the beach, staring at a couple who are kissing, commenting on how supremely jealous he is of them. Actually, more precisely, he was jealous of the man because he was going to kiss a "beautiful woman" and have sex with her while Rodger talked about how he was denied it. It's a preview of his longer video that he recorded a couple of days later just before he killed six people and himself. Once again, Rodger's view of the world was framed and distant, his understanding of men and women so juvenile and yet so culturally mainstream. The man "has" the woman. Rodger does not. The woman wants to be had by men, just not by Rodger. It's that simple.
1a. Of course, he was driving a BMW.
2. Once, the Rude Pundit was sitting around with male friends, and one of them said how his brother had hit his girlfriend. All of us thought that was messed up. "There should be a 'guy squad,'" the Rude Pundit said, "a group of men who show up whenever a man does something that makes men in general look bad and just beat the shit out of him for fucking it up for the rest of us." We all agreed: when a man acts violently to women, he makes all men look bad. Still, we should shut the fuck up and take our lumps and not try to weasel our way out by saying dumb shit, like #NotAllMen, because you just look like a desperate tool.
Instead, we should ask, with great despondency and self-reflection, "Oh, white straight American men, what has gone so deeply wrong with you? Are you that scared of losing your power that you feel you must lash out with vicious words and acts against women in order to exert control? Do you feel you are owed sex and must punish the bodies of the women if they refuse? And, if so, how the fuck can you stop yourselves before you kill again?"
3. Of course, Elliot Rodger was mentally ill. Of course, we should do more for the mentally ill. Sure, fine, let's have this debate again. So, conservatives, how about boosting mental health coverage under Obamacare and changing laws to make it harder for people with psychological issues to even buy guns? No? Then why are you even talking?
4. The Rude Pundit has discussed before his complicated relationship with guns. The short version is that he pointed a loaded pistol at a door that an intruder was attempting to open; he threatened to shoot, making the intruder run away. (If you want to know the full story, you can buy his book.) He knows someone who carries a gun on him who went on a weekend to his small office building. There, a man who was robbing the place came charging at him with a metal pipe. He shot the guy in the leg. In both these cases, having a gun may have saved the life of the gun holder.
Today, Samuel Wurzelbacher, the idiot loser once known as "Joe the Plumber," wrote that while he is sorry for the losses of the loved ones of the deceased, "[Y]our dead kids don’t trump my Constitutional rights," before going on to explain to those parents why he needs to protect his family.
Listen: while numbers are hard to come by on the number of people "saved" by guns, as well as the total number of gun-related injuries, it's not a stretch to think that a whole fuck of a lot more people are harmed by guns than helped by them. Last year, over 30 people a day were killed by guns in the United States. If 30 people a day were saved by waving their guns around, you can bet we'd hear about it. Shit, we hear about it whenever someone does so (the Rude Pundit didn't make the newspaper, but the other person mentioned above did).
Here's the rudest thing this writer can say: If guns hadn't been legal, the Rude Pundit wouldn't have had a gun that night very long ago. He doesn't know what would have happened. He might have lived, he might have died, no one can tell. But if his death or injury would have meant that 10 kids wouldn't have died because their irresponsible asshole parents couldn't keep guns in the home, well, what's so fucking special about him? If the Rude Pundit may have died because people didn't have access to guns, but a dozen, two dozen, a hundred other people would be alive, he would gladly have taken on the intruder.
See, the NRA and all the gun fellaters across the political spectrum have it wrong (and Richard Martinez, who spoke so heartbreakingly about his son who was gunned down by Elliot Rodger, has it right): Your guns are far more likely to harm someone innocent than to ever protect you from the bad guys. You are more likely to be a bad guy than you are to stop one. You are more likely to kill yourself with your gun than kill someone else. Your fantasy need for defense shouldn't trump everyone else's need to live safely in the real world.
That we don't believe that as a nation demonstrates how fucked up we are.
6/23/2014
A Few Notes on Our Continuing Gun Derangement
A week or so ago, the Rude Pundit was contacted by a self-identified gun owner and a supporter of Open Carry Texas. He called himself ex-military and retired law enforcement and, indeed, the Rude Pundit believed him. His tone was respectful and questioning,and the Rude Pundit answered him in the same way. In fact, through a few exchanges, they approached something of a dialogue.
What prompted the initial email from, oh, hell, let's call him "Jasper," was the Rude Pundit's assertion that the open display of semi-automatic rifles and shotguns in places where one might not normally see such things (like restaurants or downtown) is merely the desire of the gun owner to show his penis off. Jasper disagreed. His guns were not penis substitutes. They were guns.
And then he offered this: "Texas makes the carry of a handgun illegal without a very expensive handgun license. By open carrying long guns, our only option, we are sending a message to Austin: 'You don't like to see long guns on the streets? Fine. We don't like it either - too heavy, too awkward. Legalize carry of handguns and the long guns will go away.' The legislature has been 'talking' about legalizing the carry of handguns for about 10 years. This is our way to hold their feet to the fire."
Now, the Rude Pundit hadn't heard that discussed, not even in the column by the head of OCT that he mocked that set Jasper off (although CJ Grisham did talk about it in a longer version of the piece). And when he thought about what Jasper wrote, the Rude Pundit said to a friend, "Well, that's a reasoning I can at least respect. I think they're wrong and hope they fail miserably, but at least it's got something more to it than a pathological exhibitionism for some kind of perverse gratification." Or words to that effect. He might have said, "Instead of showing off their dicks like crazed five year-old boys." Sure, it's a bit of a public pout by carrying around the long guns, but, hey, so's a sit-in.
Of course, truth being what it is, that argument is, at best, worthless and, at worst, a bullshit lie. Every argument for the good of open carrying a weapon is bullshit. It doesn't affect crime. It doesn't deter a goddamned thing. In fact, what Open Carry Texas wants is "unrestricted open carry." That is, "It’s not just the right to openly carry a pistol but also the right to do it without any training, screening or permit." OCT calls that "constitutional carry" because what the fuck do you know about the Second Amendment, pussy?
So, sorry, Jasper. The Rude Pundit is left with his initial assessment: it's about dicks, dicks, and cocks. The Freudian message here is clearly a kind of arrested growth, with gun owners stuck in toddlerhood, where they are compelled to display their penises as a way of asserting masculinity, a narcissistic exercise. But, since just showing off your dick at the mall is illegal, a gun merely steps in as a rigid substitute. And as for the women who open carry, like a group at a Texas Target last week? Ever heard of "penis envy"?
The whole open carry thing has gone off the rails. In Medina, Ohio, there was a "march" this weekend for Open Carry, and it went something like this:
That's fine parenting there, shirtless guy who needs more sunscreen.
In Kalamazoo, Michigan, a man open carried into a library because that state barely restricts where you can bring a gun. In Georgia, a new gun law is so confusing that people aren't sure where they can carry their penises...sorry, guns, but you sure as hell can't ask someone for a permit because that'd be a violation of their rights.
There's a near-psychotic attachment people have to their guns, which is a sad commentary on where we are as a people here in the United States. But we've been through that tangled thicket of conflicted emotions before.
Instead, the Rude Pundit wants to ask a question of the people who bankroll the pro-gun movement, like the sinisterly wealthy Koch brothers, who give ass-tons of money to the NRA: Do you, as a rich person, really think it's smart to keep supporting policies that promote income inequality while at the same time fostering a belief in guns as the solution to Americans' problems? Have you really thought this through?
What prompted the initial email from, oh, hell, let's call him "Jasper," was the Rude Pundit's assertion that the open display of semi-automatic rifles and shotguns in places where one might not normally see such things (like restaurants or downtown) is merely the desire of the gun owner to show his penis off. Jasper disagreed. His guns were not penis substitutes. They were guns.
And then he offered this: "Texas makes the carry of a handgun illegal without a very expensive handgun license. By open carrying long guns, our only option, we are sending a message to Austin: 'You don't like to see long guns on the streets? Fine. We don't like it either - too heavy, too awkward. Legalize carry of handguns and the long guns will go away.' The legislature has been 'talking' about legalizing the carry of handguns for about 10 years. This is our way to hold their feet to the fire."
Now, the Rude Pundit hadn't heard that discussed, not even in the column by the head of OCT that he mocked that set Jasper off (although CJ Grisham did talk about it in a longer version of the piece). And when he thought about what Jasper wrote, the Rude Pundit said to a friend, "Well, that's a reasoning I can at least respect. I think they're wrong and hope they fail miserably, but at least it's got something more to it than a pathological exhibitionism for some kind of perverse gratification." Or words to that effect. He might have said, "Instead of showing off their dicks like crazed five year-old boys." Sure, it's a bit of a public pout by carrying around the long guns, but, hey, so's a sit-in.
Of course, truth being what it is, that argument is, at best, worthless and, at worst, a bullshit lie. Every argument for the good of open carrying a weapon is bullshit. It doesn't affect crime. It doesn't deter a goddamned thing. In fact, what Open Carry Texas wants is "unrestricted open carry." That is, "It’s not just the right to openly carry a pistol but also the right to do it without any training, screening or permit." OCT calls that "constitutional carry" because what the fuck do you know about the Second Amendment, pussy?
So, sorry, Jasper. The Rude Pundit is left with his initial assessment: it's about dicks, dicks, and cocks. The Freudian message here is clearly a kind of arrested growth, with gun owners stuck in toddlerhood, where they are compelled to display their penises as a way of asserting masculinity, a narcissistic exercise. But, since just showing off your dick at the mall is illegal, a gun merely steps in as a rigid substitute. And as for the women who open carry, like a group at a Texas Target last week? Ever heard of "penis envy"?
The whole open carry thing has gone off the rails. In Medina, Ohio, there was a "march" this weekend for Open Carry, and it went something like this:
That's fine parenting there, shirtless guy who needs more sunscreen.
In Kalamazoo, Michigan, a man open carried into a library because that state barely restricts where you can bring a gun. In Georgia, a new gun law is so confusing that people aren't sure where they can carry their penises...sorry, guns, but you sure as hell can't ask someone for a permit because that'd be a violation of their rights.
There's a near-psychotic attachment people have to their guns, which is a sad commentary on where we are as a people here in the United States. But we've been through that tangled thicket of conflicted emotions before.
Instead, the Rude Pundit wants to ask a question of the people who bankroll the pro-gun movement, like the sinisterly wealthy Koch brothers, who give ass-tons of money to the NRA: Do you, as a rich person, really think it's smart to keep supporting policies that promote income inequality while at the same time fostering a belief in guns as the solution to Americans' problems? Have you really thought this through?
7/08/2016
Bleed American
We now have new steps in our deathdance with firearms in the United States: the mass shooting of police officers. And make no mistake: this Dallas massacre was as much about the availability of guns as it was, allegedly, about revenge. That revenge was for the murder of black men for the apparent crime of legally carrying guns while black.
It wasn't supposed to go like this. The rhetoric of the gun "rights" crowd has been that citizen ownership of semi-automatic weapons like the AR-15 and others was necessary as a means to defend oneself when Barack Obama sent his jackbooted thugs to force you to pay your grazing fees or something else that is associated with "freedom" that is really just "breaking the law." In other words, it was supposed to be "Real America," in the parlance Complete-Ass-of-the-Week Joe Walsh, the former GOP congressman, armed whites facing off against a tyrannical federal government. That would show why one had to have the assault rifles and machine guns. It wasn't supposed to be that a black man might use those same weapons against the cops as a way of taking down authorities that had done harm to the black community.
In the abstract, of course. Because these Dallas cops weren't the ones involved in killing any of the long list of black and brown men and women who have been beaten, strangled, and shot by the police. When innocents are killed, we can expect that other innocents will be killed in return. That is the cycle of violence. That is how terrorism works. You terrorize one group and that group terrorizes your group, even if you're not there. Dallas Police Chief David Brown wants to break that cycle, saying at a press conference today that he won't "militarize" his force because "We are not gonna let a coward who would ambush police officers change our democracy." Those are the most encouraging words that have come from this nightmare. (And, no, the cops who killed Philando Castile and Alton Sterling shouldn't be killed. They should be charged with a crime, arrested, and stand trial.)
There is no way this doesn't, ultimately, come back to the insane proliferation of guns and the madness of our current gun laws. Without hundreds of millions of guns out there and the insidious concealed carry permits, the police wouldn't be constantly ready for a gun battle. Racism, stupidity, crap training, and guns everywhere are a mixture ripe for constant explosions. Without the ease with which one can buy an assault rifle (or whatever gun fondlers want to call it), it would be far more difficult to have the number of multiple homicide events and mass killings. And let's not even get into the juvenile, masturbatory open-carry laws, fit only for pathetic exhibitionists.
This is who we are as a nation. We have decided, and we keep affirming, that it is so important that untrained gun owners be able to defend themselves from phantoms that it is worth the all the blood that is spilled. We have decided that "freedom" only applies to individuals and not to society as a whole. If you are a civilian walking around with a firearm, I would argue that you are very, very far from free. You are a captive to your fears, and you are using a perverse notion of freedom to cover it up.
Some of us, many of us, want to be able to move through this nation without wondering if everyone has a gun on them. Some of us, many of us, don't want anyone to be gunned down, not black men by cops, not cops by black men, not people at clubs, at schools, at movie theaters, at churches, at all the places where we die. Some of us, many of us, believe that guns are the opposite of freedom and that you shouldn't have them and most, if not all, of them should be taken away from you, even if, yes, we have to pry them from your idiot hands.
We live in a prison of guns, floors slick with the blood of our dead, and we keep sliding around instead of cleaning up.
(Note: The title is from a 2001 song by Jimmy Eat World that was changed after 9/11 for fear of offending people.)
It wasn't supposed to go like this. The rhetoric of the gun "rights" crowd has been that citizen ownership of semi-automatic weapons like the AR-15 and others was necessary as a means to defend oneself when Barack Obama sent his jackbooted thugs to force you to pay your grazing fees or something else that is associated with "freedom" that is really just "breaking the law." In other words, it was supposed to be "Real America," in the parlance Complete-Ass-of-the-Week Joe Walsh, the former GOP congressman, armed whites facing off against a tyrannical federal government. That would show why one had to have the assault rifles and machine guns. It wasn't supposed to be that a black man might use those same weapons against the cops as a way of taking down authorities that had done harm to the black community.
In the abstract, of course. Because these Dallas cops weren't the ones involved in killing any of the long list of black and brown men and women who have been beaten, strangled, and shot by the police. When innocents are killed, we can expect that other innocents will be killed in return. That is the cycle of violence. That is how terrorism works. You terrorize one group and that group terrorizes your group, even if you're not there. Dallas Police Chief David Brown wants to break that cycle, saying at a press conference today that he won't "militarize" his force because "We are not gonna let a coward who would ambush police officers change our democracy." Those are the most encouraging words that have come from this nightmare. (And, no, the cops who killed Philando Castile and Alton Sterling shouldn't be killed. They should be charged with a crime, arrested, and stand trial.)
There is no way this doesn't, ultimately, come back to the insane proliferation of guns and the madness of our current gun laws. Without hundreds of millions of guns out there and the insidious concealed carry permits, the police wouldn't be constantly ready for a gun battle. Racism, stupidity, crap training, and guns everywhere are a mixture ripe for constant explosions. Without the ease with which one can buy an assault rifle (or whatever gun fondlers want to call it), it would be far more difficult to have the number of multiple homicide events and mass killings. And let's not even get into the juvenile, masturbatory open-carry laws, fit only for pathetic exhibitionists.
This is who we are as a nation. We have decided, and we keep affirming, that it is so important that untrained gun owners be able to defend themselves from phantoms that it is worth the all the blood that is spilled. We have decided that "freedom" only applies to individuals and not to society as a whole. If you are a civilian walking around with a firearm, I would argue that you are very, very far from free. You are a captive to your fears, and you are using a perverse notion of freedom to cover it up.
Some of us, many of us, want to be able to move through this nation without wondering if everyone has a gun on them. Some of us, many of us, don't want anyone to be gunned down, not black men by cops, not cops by black men, not people at clubs, at schools, at movie theaters, at churches, at all the places where we die. Some of us, many of us, believe that guns are the opposite of freedom and that you shouldn't have them and most, if not all, of them should be taken away from you, even if, yes, we have to pry them from your idiot hands.
We live in a prison of guns, floors slick with the blood of our dead, and we keep sliding around instead of cleaning up.
(Note: The title is from a 2001 song by Jimmy Eat World that was changed after 9/11 for fear of offending people.)
10/30/2014
The Death of Democracy in Two Ads, Arkansas/NRA Edition
One day, some politician in the South or the West, someone who has an honest shot at winning, is going to say, "I am so tired of sucking the NRA's dick. And if it tries to shove its dick in my face again, I'm gonna bite it off." And then that very fictional politician from Arizona or Mississippi will get off his knees, brush off his pants, stand up straight, and ask, "Can someone get me some mouthwash so I can get the taste of NRA jizz out of my mouth?" Yes, that will be quite a day. But we're nowhere close right now.
In Arkansas, the House race in the 2nd Congressional District may come down to who the NRA wants to face fuck. For the Democrats, you have Patrick Henry Hays, the former 6-term mayor of Little Rock who has a solid damn record to run on in a district that includes his city. Currently, he's up by a couple of points.
Hays says that he's a "proud lifetime member of the National Rifle Association." He repeats that in his latest ad where, no shit, he features his church, his guns, and his family, in that order. On his website, Hays says, "In Congress, Hays will oppose any law, including an assault weapons ban, that would take guns away from law-abiding citizens. But as a Mayor, Hays understands that we need background checks on commercial gun sales – to help keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill." At one point, over 90% of the public supported background checks, so it's not exactly controversial.
But because of that, the NRA gives Hays an "F." One might think that you earn an F only if you want to ban all guns and pry them out of people's cold, dead hands. What the fuck's a C+? If you think children shouldn't be allowed to open carry loaded assault rifles in schools? The NRA endorsed Republican French Hill and put out an anti-Hays ad. And it's hilarious.
We open on the doorway to a bedroom where a man is snoring. The ominous voice says ominously, "In an elegant New York mansion, billionaire Michael Bloomberg sleeps safely while a team of armed guards protects him." We track over to photos hanging over a mantle: Bloomberg and Hays, which would be really creepy, if true. Then the voice says something like, "Patrick Henry Hays will assign a murderer to every neighborhood and cackle, 'Excellent' as his stormtroopers take your guns." Actually, that's not far off. The NRA says Hays supports Bloomberg's Mayors Against Illegal Guns, who want "extreme gun control," which does not involve snowboarding, but does mean to "allow states to decide on concealed carry laws." You know, extreme extremeness.
Yeah, Hays is butt buddies with the Yankee billionaire Jew. Ain't that enough?
And, for some reason, Hays's campaign felt compelled to respond in the absolutely stupidest way possible, of course, when it put out a pro-gun pamphlet that "cited a letter he received from the NRA earlier this year saying he had been nominated for the National Patriot's Medal and praising his work on behalf of gun rights." Except the problem is that that's just one of the thousands of skeevy ways that the craven whores at the NRA try to squeeze money out of people in order to make ads that would be called "class warfare" if anyone slightly liberal had made it. Yeah, about 5 million people were "nominated" to be National Patriots and receive a medal. So it was less a Congressional Medal of Honor and more like the Golden Globes. (Boo-yah!)
There's other issues, of course, like jobs and Obamacare, but, in the waning days of what is looking to be a brutal race for Democrats (partially because of a self-fulfilling prophecy by the mainstream media - more on that Monday), it's tragicomic that this race may come down to the NRA saying, "We like the way that French guy doesn't neglect our balls. He gets an A double plus good."
Why is this an indication of the death of democracy? While Democrat Hays devotes a section of the Issues page on his website to "Upholding the Second Amendment." Hill doesn't even mention guns on his. It's just assumed that Hill is bugfuck crazy about guns because no Republican from Arkansas would stand a chance otherwise.
So even though Arkansas has benefited from the policies that Hays supports, like the Affordable Care Act, the citizens of the state may just shoot themselves in the foot.
In Arkansas, the House race in the 2nd Congressional District may come down to who the NRA wants to face fuck. For the Democrats, you have Patrick Henry Hays, the former 6-term mayor of Little Rock who has a solid damn record to run on in a district that includes his city. Currently, he's up by a couple of points.
Hays says that he's a "proud lifetime member of the National Rifle Association." He repeats that in his latest ad where, no shit, he features his church, his guns, and his family, in that order. On his website, Hays says, "In Congress, Hays will oppose any law, including an assault weapons ban, that would take guns away from law-abiding citizens. But as a Mayor, Hays understands that we need background checks on commercial gun sales – to help keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill." At one point, over 90% of the public supported background checks, so it's not exactly controversial.
But because of that, the NRA gives Hays an "F." One might think that you earn an F only if you want to ban all guns and pry them out of people's cold, dead hands. What the fuck's a C+? If you think children shouldn't be allowed to open carry loaded assault rifles in schools? The NRA endorsed Republican French Hill and put out an anti-Hays ad. And it's hilarious.
We open on the doorway to a bedroom where a man is snoring. The ominous voice says ominously, "In an elegant New York mansion, billionaire Michael Bloomberg sleeps safely while a team of armed guards protects him." We track over to photos hanging over a mantle: Bloomberg and Hays, which would be really creepy, if true. Then the voice says something like, "Patrick Henry Hays will assign a murderer to every neighborhood and cackle, 'Excellent' as his stormtroopers take your guns." Actually, that's not far off. The NRA says Hays supports Bloomberg's Mayors Against Illegal Guns, who want "extreme gun control," which does not involve snowboarding, but does mean to "allow states to decide on concealed carry laws." You know, extreme extremeness.
Yeah, Hays is butt buddies with the Yankee billionaire Jew. Ain't that enough?
And, for some reason, Hays's campaign felt compelled to respond in the absolutely stupidest way possible, of course, when it put out a pro-gun pamphlet that "cited a letter he received from the NRA earlier this year saying he had been nominated for the National Patriot's Medal and praising his work on behalf of gun rights." Except the problem is that that's just one of the thousands of skeevy ways that the craven whores at the NRA try to squeeze money out of people in order to make ads that would be called "class warfare" if anyone slightly liberal had made it. Yeah, about 5 million people were "nominated" to be National Patriots and receive a medal. So it was less a Congressional Medal of Honor and more like the Golden Globes. (Boo-yah!)
There's other issues, of course, like jobs and Obamacare, but, in the waning days of what is looking to be a brutal race for Democrats (partially because of a self-fulfilling prophecy by the mainstream media - more on that Monday), it's tragicomic that this race may come down to the NRA saying, "We like the way that French guy doesn't neglect our balls. He gets an A double plus good."
Why is this an indication of the death of democracy? While Democrat Hays devotes a section of the Issues page on his website to "Upholding the Second Amendment." Hill doesn't even mention guns on his. It's just assumed that Hill is bugfuck crazy about guns because no Republican from Arkansas would stand a chance otherwise.
So even though Arkansas has benefited from the policies that Hays supports, like the Affordable Care Act, the citizens of the state may just shoot themselves in the foot.
11/07/2013
Guns and Ammo Magazine Firing Shows Conservatism Is Fucked
Guns and Ammo Magazine Firing Shows Conservatism Is Fucked:
You know, "shit for brains" is something people sometimes say to denote the stupidity of their opponent, jokingly or seriously. But instead of just being a substitute for "dummy" or "fucktard" or "backwards ass country fuck," the Rude Pundit prefers to think of some people actually having a pile of shit inside their heads where their brains ought to be; that whenever they try to form a thought or parse out some logic, all they can do is rock the shit back and forth until their necks get tired and they end up slouched over, mouth agape, thin drool thread heading south to their laps.
If you want to know exactly who fits this description, head on over to the Facebook page for Guns and Ammo magazine. There, under the "Recent Posts by Others," you will have your American soul taken out of you, ass raped by hillbillies, and tossed into a garbage dump that's probably some shit-for-brains' backyard. "I've cancelled my subscription WHY !!!!! Guns and ammo is for gun control? Unsubscribed!!!!!where is our Second Amendment....." writes one knuckle-dragger who apparently thinks that multiple punctuation shows he really means it.
Whatever happened? Did Guns and Ammo magazine tell its readers to turn in their sniper rifles and machine guns and maybe eat a fuckin' salad every now and then? Did it go full Brady? What in the world could cause such a vomiting of hate and bile?
It was an editorial by one of the magazine's longtime contributors. Well, obviously it must have been so blatantly offensive, like calling people who own big guns with giant-ass magazines "little-dicked, paranoid, racist fuckheads who are ruining the nation"? "Selfish cunts who have no real use to the world and pretend to be tough because they live such meaningless, degraded lives"? So the Rude Pundit read this liberal screed.
Here's a transcript of the Rude Pundit's brain as he read the offending column, "Let's Talk Limits" by Dick Metcalf:
"Uh-huh. Yes, good, 'well-regulated militia' means, you know, 'regulated.' Whiskey. Whiskey. Reasonable discussion of how rights in other areas are limited. Crush Adderall. Bump. Whiskey. Statement of worry about unsafe gun practices. Rational support of a 16-hour training course for concealed carry license in Illinois. Whiskey. Let's click on this Norwegian porn site. No...no...too much feces...Zip up pants. This is a Starbucks, for chrissake. Article. Search for anything that remotely limits gun owners' 'rights' beyond a little bit of training. Whiskey. Nope, nothing. What the fuck is wrong with these people?"
Truly, the only thing that Metcalf called for was the training for concealed carry licenses. That's all. And not only was there an orgy of hatred for him and threats of canceled subscriptions, but editor Jim Bequette apologized by fellating a Glock and firing Metcalf. Because, apparently, the rest of the Bill of Rights is only good enough to polish a pistol after wiping the sweat off your ass crack.
And here is where the Rude Pundit will extrapolate for your pleasure and amusement. What this whole episode demonstrates is how unbelievably fucked the conservative movement is. The rigid ideology, the demand for adherence to dogma, and the condemnation of anyone who varies even slightly are all going to squeeze out the few remaining rational people like the last dingleberries of a dry shit. What does Dick Metcalf learn? That gun owners can have a calm discussion about an utterly reasonable and non-controversial effort to make guns even a little safer? Or that he may as well have called for the execution of AR-15 owners, considering the hatred that poured out at him?
They not only eat their own. They demand that you must eat yourself in the process.
(To be as fair as possible, on that Facebook page, there are more than a few people who are posting that they are pissed off about Metcalf's firing. Like this guy - who the Rude Pundit won't name because assholes will be assholes - who wrote: "I'm an NRA member and a competition pistol shooter. Too bad you had the guts to be reasonable and then turned into cowards because of all the thugs in our gun culture that bullied you. 74 percent of our members support more extensive background checks but Loopy Lapierre wants us to believe checks will lead to confiscations. Well there are those of us who consider the greater good. I for one will not be bullied!")
You know, "shit for brains" is something people sometimes say to denote the stupidity of their opponent, jokingly or seriously. But instead of just being a substitute for "dummy" or "fucktard" or "backwards ass country fuck," the Rude Pundit prefers to think of some people actually having a pile of shit inside their heads where their brains ought to be; that whenever they try to form a thought or parse out some logic, all they can do is rock the shit back and forth until their necks get tired and they end up slouched over, mouth agape, thin drool thread heading south to their laps.
If you want to know exactly who fits this description, head on over to the Facebook page for Guns and Ammo magazine. There, under the "Recent Posts by Others," you will have your American soul taken out of you, ass raped by hillbillies, and tossed into a garbage dump that's probably some shit-for-brains' backyard. "I've cancelled my subscription WHY !!!!! Guns and ammo is for gun control? Unsubscribed!!!!!where is our Second Amendment....." writes one knuckle-dragger who apparently thinks that multiple punctuation shows he really means it.
Whatever happened? Did Guns and Ammo magazine tell its readers to turn in their sniper rifles and machine guns and maybe eat a fuckin' salad every now and then? Did it go full Brady? What in the world could cause such a vomiting of hate and bile?
It was an editorial by one of the magazine's longtime contributors. Well, obviously it must have been so blatantly offensive, like calling people who own big guns with giant-ass magazines "little-dicked, paranoid, racist fuckheads who are ruining the nation"? "Selfish cunts who have no real use to the world and pretend to be tough because they live such meaningless, degraded lives"? So the Rude Pundit read this liberal screed.
Here's a transcript of the Rude Pundit's brain as he read the offending column, "Let's Talk Limits" by Dick Metcalf:
"Uh-huh. Yes, good, 'well-regulated militia' means, you know, 'regulated.' Whiskey. Whiskey. Reasonable discussion of how rights in other areas are limited. Crush Adderall. Bump. Whiskey. Statement of worry about unsafe gun practices. Rational support of a 16-hour training course for concealed carry license in Illinois. Whiskey. Let's click on this Norwegian porn site. No...no...too much feces...Zip up pants. This is a Starbucks, for chrissake. Article. Search for anything that remotely limits gun owners' 'rights' beyond a little bit of training. Whiskey. Nope, nothing. What the fuck is wrong with these people?"
Truly, the only thing that Metcalf called for was the training for concealed carry licenses. That's all. And not only was there an orgy of hatred for him and threats of canceled subscriptions, but editor Jim Bequette apologized by fellating a Glock and firing Metcalf. Because, apparently, the rest of the Bill of Rights is only good enough to polish a pistol after wiping the sweat off your ass crack.
And here is where the Rude Pundit will extrapolate for your pleasure and amusement. What this whole episode demonstrates is how unbelievably fucked the conservative movement is. The rigid ideology, the demand for adherence to dogma, and the condemnation of anyone who varies even slightly are all going to squeeze out the few remaining rational people like the last dingleberries of a dry shit. What does Dick Metcalf learn? That gun owners can have a calm discussion about an utterly reasonable and non-controversial effort to make guns even a little safer? Or that he may as well have called for the execution of AR-15 owners, considering the hatred that poured out at him?
They not only eat their own. They demand that you must eat yourself in the process.
(To be as fair as possible, on that Facebook page, there are more than a few people who are posting that they are pissed off about Metcalf's firing. Like this guy - who the Rude Pundit won't name because assholes will be assholes - who wrote: "I'm an NRA member and a competition pistol shooter. Too bad you had the guts to be reasonable and then turned into cowards because of all the thugs in our gun culture that bullied you. 74 percent of our members support more extensive background checks but Loopy Lapierre wants us to believe checks will lead to confiscations. Well there are those of us who consider the greater good. I for one will not be bullied!")
2/16/2018
More Gun Shit
At this point, I've written so many times about guns that I don't know what else to say. None of us do. It's the same fuckin' merry-go-round of arguments that really come back to, for me, the simple question: "Well, why don't we try something?" Because, see, as of now, as of the last 15 years or so, we haven't done anything except make it easier for people to get more guns and ammo. So let's try something.
When I posted on Twitter that I thought assault weapons should be outlawed and then gathered by law enforcement through a buyback, I ended by saying that if that doesn't work, "pry them from cold, dead hands." Predictably, that led to responses like "Try it, pussy" or "So you want the government to kill people to get guns. That's why we have guns" or other gun shit. I don't want mass murder. I don't want civil war. I'm not even proposing banning all guns. But if laws change, as they sometimes do, you gotta follow them or you get arrested. When the speed limit went down on my street, I didn't say, "Fuck you, motherfuckers. I'm doing the old speed." And if you won't comply with the law peacefully, well, shit, Cletus, that's on you.
All I want at this point is to go back to the Republican assault weapons ban from 1989, which happened after a school shooting in Stockton, California, that left 5 dead. It seems like a quaint number now in the age of regular double-digit corpse counts, but it shocked the country. And George H. W. Bush signed an executive order banning certain assault weapons. Then, urged by Carter, Ford, and Reagan, in 1994, the Congress passed a crime bill with a weaker ban, but it was still there.
As far as the legality of that ban, the Supreme Court never took it up. A lower court said it was constitutional. And, just a couple of months ago, the Supreme Court let stand a U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that an assault weapons ban in Maryland was totally constitutional. By 10-4 vote, the circuit court, which is not "liberal" or "activist" by any stretch, said, "Assault weapons and large-capacity magazines are not protected by the Second Amendment." And SCOTUS let it stand.
Here's what would happen if AR-15s and the like were banned: Almost everyone who owns one would turn it in for buyback cash because they are law-abiding citizens. A few would try to protest and then have their guns taken when they're peacefully arrested. A tiny number would keep them secretly. Maybe a couple of idiots would try to Ruby Ridge it. We know how that ended. And some criminals would be criminals about it. But considering that most of the guns used in mass shootings are bought legally, at the very least, maybe we'd save some children's lives.
And, honestly, I have never heard of a situation where an AR-15 was the only gun necessary to defend oneself. Sure, you can show someone a gun and they'll back down, but, shit, that'd work if you had a little revolver. When is the last time an ordinary American was in a bind where they needed a semi-automatic rifle?
When I posted on Twitter that I thought assault weapons should be outlawed and then gathered by law enforcement through a buyback, I ended by saying that if that doesn't work, "pry them from cold, dead hands." Predictably, that led to responses like "Try it, pussy" or "So you want the government to kill people to get guns. That's why we have guns" or other gun shit. I don't want mass murder. I don't want civil war. I'm not even proposing banning all guns. But if laws change, as they sometimes do, you gotta follow them or you get arrested. When the speed limit went down on my street, I didn't say, "Fuck you, motherfuckers. I'm doing the old speed." And if you won't comply with the law peacefully, well, shit, Cletus, that's on you.
All I want at this point is to go back to the Republican assault weapons ban from 1989, which happened after a school shooting in Stockton, California, that left 5 dead. It seems like a quaint number now in the age of regular double-digit corpse counts, but it shocked the country. And George H. W. Bush signed an executive order banning certain assault weapons. Then, urged by Carter, Ford, and Reagan, in 1994, the Congress passed a crime bill with a weaker ban, but it was still there.
As far as the legality of that ban, the Supreme Court never took it up. A lower court said it was constitutional. And, just a couple of months ago, the Supreme Court let stand a U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that an assault weapons ban in Maryland was totally constitutional. By 10-4 vote, the circuit court, which is not "liberal" or "activist" by any stretch, said, "Assault weapons and large-capacity magazines are not protected by the Second Amendment." And SCOTUS let it stand.
Here's what would happen if AR-15s and the like were banned: Almost everyone who owns one would turn it in for buyback cash because they are law-abiding citizens. A few would try to protest and then have their guns taken when they're peacefully arrested. A tiny number would keep them secretly. Maybe a couple of idiots would try to Ruby Ridge it. We know how that ended. And some criminals would be criminals about it. But considering that most of the guns used in mass shootings are bought legally, at the very least, maybe we'd save some children's lives.
And, honestly, I have never heard of a situation where an AR-15 was the only gun necessary to defend oneself. Sure, you can show someone a gun and they'll back down, but, shit, that'd work if you had a little revolver. When is the last time an ordinary American was in a bind where they needed a semi-automatic rifle?
6/14/2017
Steve Scalise Supported the Lack of Laws and Regulations That Allowed His Shooting to Happen
A good-sized chunk of Representative Steve Scalise's congressional career has been devoted to making guns easier to get. Scalise, a Louisiana Republican who is the Majority Whip in the House of Representatives, was one of five victims shot by James T. Hodgkinson in Alexandria, Virginia. The wannabe mass murderer was carrying a semiautomatic rifle and a pistol. Hodgkinson was gunned down and killed by Capitol police, but he had apparently come to the baseball field to specifically take out Republicans. A motivation beyond a deranged vision of how to achieve progressive goals hasn't been announced.
Scalise is proudly, even obnoxiously devoted to the Second Amendment. He has an A+ rating from the NRA and a 100% pro-gun voting record, and he has, on many occasions, spoken against any laws that might even minimally effect the free acquisition of all kinds of guns, including the kind of rifle used today on him.
On April 25, 2013, Scalise made a floor speech where he used the Sandy Hook massacre of children to support the rights of gun owners. "I think they counted over 40 different laws that were broken by the Sandy Hook murderer," Scalise said. "Then somebody is going to tell you that one more law, which makes it harder for law-abiding citizens to get a gun, would have stopped him from doing that." The congressman doesn't mention that a law banning assault weapons would have actually slowed down Adam Lanza. And we're not even allowed to discuss banning handguns anymore, which would have done a great deal to stop the bloodshed.
Scalise co-sponsored a resolution that praised the Supreme Court for its Heller decision that eliminated limits on gun ownership in Washington, D.C. Prior to the decision, he had co-sponsored a bill that would have done the same thing, including repealing the ban on semiautomatic guns. And he co-wrote a 2015 letter to the head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives condemning a reclassification of a kind of bullet. In the letter, he talks about the "the failed 'Assault Weapons Ban.'"
A more substantial action was that he voted to overturn President Obama's rule that prevented people who had been determined to be mentally ill from purchasing guns. I'd also bet that Scalise supports laws that allow people arrested for domestic violence to retain their guns. Hodgkinson had been charged several times for that kind of assault.
Look, this isn't a "blame the victim" type of thing. There is nothing that Steve Scalise did today that brought on the shooting. And I hope he and all the other victims recover fully. But if a pig is gonna build a house out of straw, he shouldn't be too shocked when a wolf comes along to blow it down. It'd be something like a miracle if this caused Scalise to reconsider his blind devotion to the NRA and its perverse version of the Second Amendment.
More likely, though, it will just make him and his firearms-mad colleagues double-down and demand even more guns and fewer restrictions. And they will blame Kathy Griffin, Shakespeare in the Park, Black Lives Matter, angry liberals, and anyone and anything for this rather than take a single second to look in the hospital mirror to ask what they could do differently.
Like maybe stop talking romantically about using guns to solve problems.
Scalise is proudly, even obnoxiously devoted to the Second Amendment. He has an A+ rating from the NRA and a 100% pro-gun voting record, and he has, on many occasions, spoken against any laws that might even minimally effect the free acquisition of all kinds of guns, including the kind of rifle used today on him.
On April 25, 2013, Scalise made a floor speech where he used the Sandy Hook massacre of children to support the rights of gun owners. "I think they counted over 40 different laws that were broken by the Sandy Hook murderer," Scalise said. "Then somebody is going to tell you that one more law, which makes it harder for law-abiding citizens to get a gun, would have stopped him from doing that." The congressman doesn't mention that a law banning assault weapons would have actually slowed down Adam Lanza. And we're not even allowed to discuss banning handguns anymore, which would have done a great deal to stop the bloodshed.
Scalise co-sponsored a resolution that praised the Supreme Court for its Heller decision that eliminated limits on gun ownership in Washington, D.C. Prior to the decision, he had co-sponsored a bill that would have done the same thing, including repealing the ban on semiautomatic guns. And he co-wrote a 2015 letter to the head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives condemning a reclassification of a kind of bullet. In the letter, he talks about the "the failed 'Assault Weapons Ban.'"
A more substantial action was that he voted to overturn President Obama's rule that prevented people who had been determined to be mentally ill from purchasing guns. I'd also bet that Scalise supports laws that allow people arrested for domestic violence to retain their guns. Hodgkinson had been charged several times for that kind of assault.
Look, this isn't a "blame the victim" type of thing. There is nothing that Steve Scalise did today that brought on the shooting. And I hope he and all the other victims recover fully. But if a pig is gonna build a house out of straw, he shouldn't be too shocked when a wolf comes along to blow it down. It'd be something like a miracle if this caused Scalise to reconsider his blind devotion to the NRA and its perverse version of the Second Amendment.
More likely, though, it will just make him and his firearms-mad colleagues double-down and demand even more guns and fewer restrictions. And they will blame Kathy Griffin, Shakespeare in the Park, Black Lives Matter, angry liberals, and anyone and anything for this rather than take a single second to look in the hospital mirror to ask what they could do differently.
Like maybe stop talking romantically about using guns to solve problems.
2/22/2018
What Did That Dumb Orange Motherfucker Say Now? (Guns, Guns, and More Guns Edition)
It's been 24 hours of our dumb orange motherfucker of a president, Donald Trump, saying things that only a dumb motherfucker would say about guns and the solution to mass shootings at schools in the United States. It started with his "listening session" with parents, teachers, and students who had lost someone in a school shooting or had survived one. Of course, it was a "listening session" only if you consider as "listening" the way in which Trump sat sullenly in his chair, hunched over like a particularly brain damaged bonobo wondering when boring blah-blah time will be over so he can throw some of the poo he's been saving up.
I mean, really, the man needed a goddamn note to tell him to ask things that even a barely literate child would have known to ask.
But, finally, after being forced to hear stories about human beings with feelings that aren't just "Trump good. Me love Trump. He have big hands and penis," the mad president got to say his piece, and, obviously, it was utterly inhuman nonsense crossed with the kind of idiocy that only a rich fuck who's never been told he's full of shit can provide. Seriously, my favorite thing Trump does when he speaks is to act like he's fuckin' Magellan, discovering shit that other people have always known about.
"You know, years ago, we had mental hospitals — mental institutions," he informed the gathered people, as if they were all aliens who had just come to earth. "We had a lot of them, and a lot of them have closed. They’ve closed. Some people thought it was a stigma. Some people thought, frankly, it was a — the legislators thought it was too expensive." Okay, first, asshole, whose fuckin' party thought it was too expensive to keep people institutionalized? And then a whole bunch of 'em were fuckin' hellholes and dumping grounds. Besides, who the fuck is gonna pay for the treatment, since someone thinks it's a goddamn crime to provide health care.
Trump continued on this point: "Today, if you catch somebody, they don’t know what to do with them. He hasn’t committed the crime, but he may, very well. And there’s no mental institution, there’s no place to bring them." What the fuck is he talking about? Your guess is as good as anyone else's. But you can bet that his kids and his lackeys told him he's brilliant. The National Alliance on Mental Illness released a statement calling "bullshit" on this.
Twice Trump told us that carrying guns in a concealed way is "called concealed carry," as if he's letting us all in on some secret lingo. His idea, that 20% of teachers would have "special training" and they would be armed with guns and ready to go fuckin' Statham on any active shooters in their school, is so fucking ridiculously dumb that it's not even deserving of discussion. Not only did the Broward County sheriff dismiss it last night, but Senator Marco Rubio, one of the NRA's spoogebuckets, also thought it was worthless (this was in-between being totally owned by Parkland high school students).
Our fucking worthless piece of garbage president went even nutsier today while meeting with members of law enforcement, elfen scourge Jeff Sessions, and bejeweled viper Betsy DeVos. He shit all over every president that came before him: "We will take action, unlike, for many years, where people sitting in my position did not take action. They didn’t take proper action. They took no action at all. We’re going to take action." You mean all those laws that were filibustered or voted down by the GOP? Fuck you, man.
There was bizarro torture porn featuring MS-13, the Latino gang that gives Trump semi-wood whenever he mentions their swarthy violence: "They’re killing people, not necessarily with guns — because that’s not painful enough. This is what they think. They want to do it more painfully and they want to do it slowly. So they cut them up with knives. They don’t use guns; they use knives, because they want it to be a long, painful death to people that had no idea this was coming." I honestly never thought I'd live to see a president who loved describing graphic pain.
Again, Trump's brain is stuck in the 1980s, when the Crips and the Bloods were the big deal, when violence in video games and movies were the subject of congressional hearings and White House action. Said our old man president, "I’m hearing more and more people say the level of violence on video games is really shaping young people’s thoughts. And then you go the further step, and that’s the movies. You see these movies, they’re so violent. And yet a kid is able to see the movie if sex isn’t involved, but killing is involved, and maybe they have to put a rating system for that." No, we've never discussed this before. We'd never put a rating system onto video games, TV, and movies.
But the piece-de-fucked-up-tance was the repetition of "hardened" schools. Talking about "gun-free zones," as if they are just areas where everyone is wearing a "shoot me" sign, Trump said, "We have to harden our schools, not soften them up." And that means arming and training the teacher commandos. "You have now made the school into a hardened target...You want a hardened school, and I want a hardened school, too," he repeated.
"Surely," you're thinking, "it couldn't get any more fucking weird." Oh, how about this: "I think we need hardened sites. We need to let people know: You come into our schools, you’re going to be dead, and it’s going to be fast...So we have to harden our sites... if you harden the sites, you’re not going to have this problem...We need a hardened school. But we want to harden it without having everybody standing there with a rifle...Everybody agrees on a hard...we have to harden our schools, we have to make sure — in a way that doesn’t look like they’re hardened. But we have to let the bad guy know that they are hardened...I’d much rather have a hardened school."
Feel free to make your own "harden" jokes. I'll just say that it's fucking disturbing how he locks onto a word he heard and repeats it like a skipping record that no one dares to turn off.
At the end of the day, our cruel dunderheaded president won't do shit, nor will the filthy whores in the GOP, not with all that NRA cash sticking out of their assholes and Wayne LaPierre, standing there with a shovel, ready to shove more into any orifice that presents itself.
I mean, really, the man needed a goddamn note to tell him to ask things that even a barely literate child would have known to ask.
But, finally, after being forced to hear stories about human beings with feelings that aren't just "Trump good. Me love Trump. He have big hands and penis," the mad president got to say his piece, and, obviously, it was utterly inhuman nonsense crossed with the kind of idiocy that only a rich fuck who's never been told he's full of shit can provide. Seriously, my favorite thing Trump does when he speaks is to act like he's fuckin' Magellan, discovering shit that other people have always known about.
"You know, years ago, we had mental hospitals — mental institutions," he informed the gathered people, as if they were all aliens who had just come to earth. "We had a lot of them, and a lot of them have closed. They’ve closed. Some people thought it was a stigma. Some people thought, frankly, it was a — the legislators thought it was too expensive." Okay, first, asshole, whose fuckin' party thought it was too expensive to keep people institutionalized? And then a whole bunch of 'em were fuckin' hellholes and dumping grounds. Besides, who the fuck is gonna pay for the treatment, since someone thinks it's a goddamn crime to provide health care.
Trump continued on this point: "Today, if you catch somebody, they don’t know what to do with them. He hasn’t committed the crime, but he may, very well. And there’s no mental institution, there’s no place to bring them." What the fuck is he talking about? Your guess is as good as anyone else's. But you can bet that his kids and his lackeys told him he's brilliant. The National Alliance on Mental Illness released a statement calling "bullshit" on this.
Twice Trump told us that carrying guns in a concealed way is "called concealed carry," as if he's letting us all in on some secret lingo. His idea, that 20% of teachers would have "special training" and they would be armed with guns and ready to go fuckin' Statham on any active shooters in their school, is so fucking ridiculously dumb that it's not even deserving of discussion. Not only did the Broward County sheriff dismiss it last night, but Senator Marco Rubio, one of the NRA's spoogebuckets, also thought it was worthless (this was in-between being totally owned by Parkland high school students).
Our fucking worthless piece of garbage president went even nutsier today while meeting with members of law enforcement, elfen scourge Jeff Sessions, and bejeweled viper Betsy DeVos. He shit all over every president that came before him: "We will take action, unlike, for many years, where people sitting in my position did not take action. They didn’t take proper action. They took no action at all. We’re going to take action." You mean all those laws that were filibustered or voted down by the GOP? Fuck you, man.
There was bizarro torture porn featuring MS-13, the Latino gang that gives Trump semi-wood whenever he mentions their swarthy violence: "They’re killing people, not necessarily with guns — because that’s not painful enough. This is what they think. They want to do it more painfully and they want to do it slowly. So they cut them up with knives. They don’t use guns; they use knives, because they want it to be a long, painful death to people that had no idea this was coming." I honestly never thought I'd live to see a president who loved describing graphic pain.
Again, Trump's brain is stuck in the 1980s, when the Crips and the Bloods were the big deal, when violence in video games and movies were the subject of congressional hearings and White House action. Said our old man president, "I’m hearing more and more people say the level of violence on video games is really shaping young people’s thoughts. And then you go the further step, and that’s the movies. You see these movies, they’re so violent. And yet a kid is able to see the movie if sex isn’t involved, but killing is involved, and maybe they have to put a rating system for that." No, we've never discussed this before. We'd never put a rating system onto video games, TV, and movies.
But the piece-de-fucked-up-tance was the repetition of "hardened" schools. Talking about "gun-free zones," as if they are just areas where everyone is wearing a "shoot me" sign, Trump said, "We have to harden our schools, not soften them up." And that means arming and training the teacher commandos. "You have now made the school into a hardened target...You want a hardened school, and I want a hardened school, too," he repeated.
"Surely," you're thinking, "it couldn't get any more fucking weird." Oh, how about this: "I think we need hardened sites. We need to let people know: You come into our schools, you’re going to be dead, and it’s going to be fast...So we have to harden our sites... if you harden the sites, you’re not going to have this problem...We need a hardened school. But we want to harden it without having everybody standing there with a rifle...Everybody agrees on a hard...we have to harden our schools, we have to make sure — in a way that doesn’t look like they’re hardened. But we have to let the bad guy know that they are hardened...I’d much rather have a hardened school."
Feel free to make your own "harden" jokes. I'll just say that it's fucking disturbing how he locks onto a word he heard and repeats it like a skipping record that no one dares to turn off.
At the end of the day, our cruel dunderheaded president won't do shit, nor will the filthy whores in the GOP, not with all that NRA cash sticking out of their assholes and Wayne LaPierre, standing there with a shovel, ready to shove more into any orifice that presents itself.
11/06/2017
Chekhov's Second Amendment: The Horrible Inevitability of the Gun
A well-worn, possibly apocryphal anecdote about the Russian playwright Anton Chekhov has him giving advice on writing and the use of plot devices. "If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired," Chekhov supposedly said. What's often left off is the last part of that line: "Otherwise don't put it there." The idea is that if you're not going to bother using the gun, it's useless to have it.
While I don't think anyone shoots up a church or a school or a concert or a club or a house or a restaurant or an office or a store just because he (and, let's be honest, it's almost always "he") owns a semi-automatic, possibly modified, possibly with a bump stock, but if you are thinking of ruining the day for a few dozen, possibly a few hundred, people, and you've had all these guns just sitting there, maybe taken out for target practice, well, if you're not gonna use it, then don't put it there, right?
As we grapple with our new house of horrors in a house of worship, this time in a tiny town, Sutherland Springs, Texas, the usual tedious voices on the right are voicing the usual tedious things. "We don’t need politics right now," said Senator Ted Cruz when asked if we should maybe, perhaps, at least, please, just a little, talk about gun laws. And you'll hear that repeatedly. Doyenne of evil spin and a woman with a raging case of the Trumps, Kellyanne Conway. said that it was "disrespectful" to talk about politics now.
Except it's not too soon for everyone. For instance, today the National Rifle Association put out a call for "urgent action" on an Illinois bill that, the NRA screams, is "extreme." What is this "onerous," "egregious," and "excessive" legislation? A move to license gun dealers. That's the thing that's so urgent that the NRA couldn't put aside politics in honor of the dead. If the anti-gun side is supposed to shut up, then so should the pro-gun.
Except the pro-gun side never thinks it's getting political after a massacre, no matter how many children are torn to shreds by guns. The Texas Attorney General, Ken Paxton, declared that the answer wasn't to do anything to stem the tide of guns themselves. Laws don't work, Paxton said. What will work, he explained, is "arming some of the parishioners or the congregation so that they can respond if something like this, when something like this happens again."
To some, this sounds like great sense - if you have more guns, then there's less of a chance this Devin Kelley monster in body armor could have gotten off all the shots he did from the oversized magazine he was legally able to buy, along with the legally-bought AR-15. And that's frightening, not just because it sounds nonsensical. To some of us, it sounds like surrendering. It sounds like we have decided that the only way to deal with guns is to give up and allow them to infect every part of our society, that instead of making ourselves safe, we make ourselves eternally unsafe, always awaiting the next bullet, always having the gun in the first act that goes off in the next, always prepared with thoughts and prayers instead of action.
Except thoughts and prayers just seem ludicrous when a church is shot up so badly that the pastor doesn't think the actual physical building can ever be repaired. And while the faithful will say that they are being tested, that they find comfort in Jesus, that they know there is a plan, I can't help but wonder if we're not misreading the signs from God. I mean, maybe all the horrific events, the frequent massacres with more than a dozen, two dozen victims, is God telling us that it's time to give up the guns.
What could be a clearer message than God showing us what happens when human-made weapons are used on human bodies? "Oh, shooting high schools wasn't enough? How about shooting little kids? Oh, that's not enough? Then how about shooting up some churches? C'mon, what the hell is wrong with you idiots? Could I be any clearer?" I imagine a frustrated invisible sky wizard yelling at the United States. "Why aren't you politicizing this shit? All that means is 'doing something to solve the problem.' Jesus H. Christ. No, not you, Jesus..."
If it's too early to talk about gun control in the wake of the tragedy in Sutherland Springs, then let's just say we're talking about it post-Las Vegas. Or post-Orlando. Or post-Newtown. However far back you need to go to feel comfortable -Columbine? Killeen? San Ysidro? - let's say we're talking about it because of that nightmare.
While I don't think anyone shoots up a church or a school or a concert or a club or a house or a restaurant or an office or a store just because he (and, let's be honest, it's almost always "he") owns a semi-automatic, possibly modified, possibly with a bump stock, but if you are thinking of ruining the day for a few dozen, possibly a few hundred, people, and you've had all these guns just sitting there, maybe taken out for target practice, well, if you're not gonna use it, then don't put it there, right?
As we grapple with our new house of horrors in a house of worship, this time in a tiny town, Sutherland Springs, Texas, the usual tedious voices on the right are voicing the usual tedious things. "We don’t need politics right now," said Senator Ted Cruz when asked if we should maybe, perhaps, at least, please, just a little, talk about gun laws. And you'll hear that repeatedly. Doyenne of evil spin and a woman with a raging case of the Trumps, Kellyanne Conway. said that it was "disrespectful" to talk about politics now.
Except it's not too soon for everyone. For instance, today the National Rifle Association put out a call for "urgent action" on an Illinois bill that, the NRA screams, is "extreme." What is this "onerous," "egregious," and "excessive" legislation? A move to license gun dealers. That's the thing that's so urgent that the NRA couldn't put aside politics in honor of the dead. If the anti-gun side is supposed to shut up, then so should the pro-gun.
Except the pro-gun side never thinks it's getting political after a massacre, no matter how many children are torn to shreds by guns. The Texas Attorney General, Ken Paxton, declared that the answer wasn't to do anything to stem the tide of guns themselves. Laws don't work, Paxton said. What will work, he explained, is "arming some of the parishioners or the congregation so that they can respond if something like this, when something like this happens again."
To some, this sounds like great sense - if you have more guns, then there's less of a chance this Devin Kelley monster in body armor could have gotten off all the shots he did from the oversized magazine he was legally able to buy, along with the legally-bought AR-15. And that's frightening, not just because it sounds nonsensical. To some of us, it sounds like surrendering. It sounds like we have decided that the only way to deal with guns is to give up and allow them to infect every part of our society, that instead of making ourselves safe, we make ourselves eternally unsafe, always awaiting the next bullet, always having the gun in the first act that goes off in the next, always prepared with thoughts and prayers instead of action.
Except thoughts and prayers just seem ludicrous when a church is shot up so badly that the pastor doesn't think the actual physical building can ever be repaired. And while the faithful will say that they are being tested, that they find comfort in Jesus, that they know there is a plan, I can't help but wonder if we're not misreading the signs from God. I mean, maybe all the horrific events, the frequent massacres with more than a dozen, two dozen victims, is God telling us that it's time to give up the guns.
What could be a clearer message than God showing us what happens when human-made weapons are used on human bodies? "Oh, shooting high schools wasn't enough? How about shooting little kids? Oh, that's not enough? Then how about shooting up some churches? C'mon, what the hell is wrong with you idiots? Could I be any clearer?" I imagine a frustrated invisible sky wizard yelling at the United States. "Why aren't you politicizing this shit? All that means is 'doing something to solve the problem.' Jesus H. Christ. No, not you, Jesus..."
If it's too early to talk about gun control in the wake of the tragedy in Sutherland Springs, then let's just say we're talking about it post-Las Vegas. Or post-Orlando. Or post-Newtown. However far back you need to go to feel comfortable -Columbine? Killeen? San Ysidro? - let's say we're talking about it because of that nightmare.
10/04/2017
On Guns, on Abortion, on Everything, the Right Knows It's Wrong (and They Don't Care)
The conservative movement in this country is filthy with hypocrites. It's always been that way: the ones who talk morality and law and order are always the ones who are busy snorting coke off the hard dicks of male prostitutes. Conservatism can't function without hypocrisy because it demands an impossible purity from its adherents.
You, dear, corrupt conservative, have to be able to trick the rubes into signing onto the greed and avarice part of your policies. You need those votes because, for now, there still is some semblance of democracy. You need to give the rubes red meat to keep them interested because they sure as shit aren't going to understand marginal tax rates. So that's why you gotta feed 'em flags, guns, Jesus, and abortion. And that's where the purity no one can achieve fucks you over all the time.
Rep. Tim Murphy of the former coal mining area around Pittsburgh is a Republican (of course) who was a big deal in the anti-abortion movement (of course). He just cosponsored a bill to ban all abortions after 20 weeks, something that is generally only done in medical emergencies and is about 1% of all abortions. He is married but had a mistress he was fucking (of course) and knocked up (of course). So he told her to get an abortion. Of course. Like every gay-bashing cocksucker and every hooker-humping preacher, Murphy was a conservative who was saying one thing and doing another. When Shannon Edwards, the forensic psychologist Murphy was boning, confronted the congressman about an anti-choice Facebook post he supposedly had written after saying she should abort their love fetus, Murphy responded, "I get what you say about my March for Life messages. I've never written them. Staff does them. I read them and winced."
In other words, Murphy, like nearly every anti-choice politician, knows that abortion needs to be safe and legal for his misterss. But he refuses to say it should be for everyone else.
A whole other level of hypocrisy is that Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, two of President Donald Trump's closest advisers, have been using private email accounts for government business. And now, it seems, they have been using the private email server of the Trump Corporation. Let's put it this way: this is exactly what Trump and the media talked about for months during the campaign. Hillary Clinton's private email and use of a non-government server was worse than five Watergates plus three Teapot Domes. It was the greatest scandal in America's history because we were told it was. Sure, everyone investigating it found nothing to prosecute Clinton, but that's just that the fix was in and Clintons murder people and Seth Rich and fucking nothing matters because Jared and Ivanka are doing the same shit but no one cares.
In other words, "but her emails" was a big fucking joke, a lie to make Clinton appear sinister and a trick to make the rubes happy with rage.
And the thing is that they know it. Conservative politicians and commentators simply know the difference between right and wrong. They just don't give a happy monkey fuck because anything that impinges on their power needs to be suppressed.
Which brings us around to guns. I promise you that most NRA-owned politicians know that no Democrats are trying to take away all the guns, despite the NRA's scurrilous propaganda. I promise you that they know that common sense laws restricting gun ownership would actually slow down the number of shootings. I promise you that they know there should be an assault weapons ban and more. Sure, there are the true believers, but reporters hear all the time from Republicans, especially, that they would support background checks and permits but, if they do, the NRA will say they want to melt down all your guns to make a Black Lives Matter monument.
Conservative beliefs are utterly delusional and fly in the face of all facts and all aspects of human behavior. We know that gun control works because it works everywhere gun laws are strict. We know that limiting access to abortion and birth control ends up harming women. We know that use of a private email server isn't a major crime. We know that football players protesting by kneeling during the National Anthem is protected speech. But conservatives have to keep the rubes at bay. The only way to reconcile the abject, fucked-up hypocrisy that conservatives live with is that they know. They just don't fucking care because there has been no cost to not caring since 2008 (and much longer in some congressional districts).
And so nothing will be done when it comes to guns in the wake of Las Vegas (and Orlando and Newtown and...). Until they are forced to pay for their hypocrisy, for the complete and utter fraud they have perpetrated (including the support for Trump), nothing is going to ever happen.
You, dear, corrupt conservative, have to be able to trick the rubes into signing onto the greed and avarice part of your policies. You need those votes because, for now, there still is some semblance of democracy. You need to give the rubes red meat to keep them interested because they sure as shit aren't going to understand marginal tax rates. So that's why you gotta feed 'em flags, guns, Jesus, and abortion. And that's where the purity no one can achieve fucks you over all the time.
Rep. Tim Murphy of the former coal mining area around Pittsburgh is a Republican (of course) who was a big deal in the anti-abortion movement (of course). He just cosponsored a bill to ban all abortions after 20 weeks, something that is generally only done in medical emergencies and is about 1% of all abortions. He is married but had a mistress he was fucking (of course) and knocked up (of course). So he told her to get an abortion. Of course. Like every gay-bashing cocksucker and every hooker-humping preacher, Murphy was a conservative who was saying one thing and doing another. When Shannon Edwards, the forensic psychologist Murphy was boning, confronted the congressman about an anti-choice Facebook post he supposedly had written after saying she should abort their love fetus, Murphy responded, "I get what you say about my March for Life messages. I've never written them. Staff does them. I read them and winced."
In other words, Murphy, like nearly every anti-choice politician, knows that abortion needs to be safe and legal for his misterss. But he refuses to say it should be for everyone else.
A whole other level of hypocrisy is that Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, two of President Donald Trump's closest advisers, have been using private email accounts for government business. And now, it seems, they have been using the private email server of the Trump Corporation. Let's put it this way: this is exactly what Trump and the media talked about for months during the campaign. Hillary Clinton's private email and use of a non-government server was worse than five Watergates plus three Teapot Domes. It was the greatest scandal in America's history because we were told it was. Sure, everyone investigating it found nothing to prosecute Clinton, but that's just that the fix was in and Clintons murder people and Seth Rich and fucking nothing matters because Jared and Ivanka are doing the same shit but no one cares.
In other words, "but her emails" was a big fucking joke, a lie to make Clinton appear sinister and a trick to make the rubes happy with rage.
And the thing is that they know it. Conservative politicians and commentators simply know the difference between right and wrong. They just don't give a happy monkey fuck because anything that impinges on their power needs to be suppressed.
Which brings us around to guns. I promise you that most NRA-owned politicians know that no Democrats are trying to take away all the guns, despite the NRA's scurrilous propaganda. I promise you that they know that common sense laws restricting gun ownership would actually slow down the number of shootings. I promise you that they know there should be an assault weapons ban and more. Sure, there are the true believers, but reporters hear all the time from Republicans, especially, that they would support background checks and permits but, if they do, the NRA will say they want to melt down all your guns to make a Black Lives Matter monument.
Conservative beliefs are utterly delusional and fly in the face of all facts and all aspects of human behavior. We know that gun control works because it works everywhere gun laws are strict. We know that limiting access to abortion and birth control ends up harming women. We know that use of a private email server isn't a major crime. We know that football players protesting by kneeling during the National Anthem is protected speech. But conservatives have to keep the rubes at bay. The only way to reconcile the abject, fucked-up hypocrisy that conservatives live with is that they know. They just don't fucking care because there has been no cost to not caring since 2008 (and much longer in some congressional districts).
And so nothing will be done when it comes to guns in the wake of Las Vegas (and Orlando and Newtown and...). Until they are forced to pay for their hypocrisy, for the complete and utter fraud they have perpetrated (including the support for Trump), nothing is going to ever happen.
9/03/2019
Corporate America Is Finally Getting Sick of Your Guns
How fucking pathetic is this: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his mass murder-enablers in the GOP caucus are refusing to do anything to tighten gun laws, including things that are supported by between 60 and 90% of Americans. McConnell is taking the bitch way out by saying that he won't bring to the floor anything that Donald Trump won't sign. But the NRA keeps fisting McConnell with a clenched hand filled with cash, so as long as they hit that prostate just right, the saggy-faced motherfucker won't budge.
And to make things even more pathetic, Walmart and Kroger, both of which have a huge presence in red state America, have taken action today that politicians won't take.
After a couple of mass shootings in their stores, Walmart announced that, in addition to previous steps like halting the sale of handguns and massacre guns, it's gonna stop selling handgun ammunition and "discontinue sales of short-barrel rifle ammunition such as the .223 caliber and 5.56 caliber that, while commonly used in some hunting rifles, can also be used in large capacity clips on military-style weapons." They even recognize that they're gonna lose a big chunk of sales, but, well, when you're a company worth hundreds of billions of dollars, you can afford to do something that might stop your customers from being killed.
Walmart also goes even further, though. Because idiots walking around with their big fucking rifles freak people out, Walmart is "respectfully requesting that customers no longer openly carry firearms into our stores or Sam’s Clubs in states where 'open carry' is permitted" unless you're a cop. Kroger, which is a multi-billion dollar supermarket chain based in Ohio, also put out a statement on open carry that said, in essence, "Jesus fuck, stop being such little pricks and leave your guns at home, you dumbass cowards." But they said it "respectfully." (Kroger is also being sued for negligence for allowing open carry in its stores, so it's got a bit of motivation there, too.)
The part that takes this to the next level of how deranged and out of touch Republicans have gotten is that both corporations are calling for gun control legislation. Walmart's CEO said, "We encourage our nation’s leaders to move forward and strengthen background checks and to remove weapons from those who have been determined to pose an imminent danger." Damn. He heavily suggested renewing the assault weapons ban and added that "We must also do more, as a country, to understand the root causes that lead to this type of violent behavior," which is a fuck of a lot stronger than just saying the words "mental illness" over and over.
In Kroger's statement, the company said much the same, as well as "Kroger has demonstrated with our actions that we recognize the growing chorus of Americans who are no longer comfortable with the status quo and who are advocating for concrete and common sense gun reforms."
You get it, you whores of the NRA in Congress? Two of the biggest retail corporations in the United States know that so many Americans support gun control that they don't give a shit if a few hyper-armed yahoos decide to buy their scratchy toilet paper over at the Piggly-Wiggly on the other side of town. They know that the country is shifting, and instead of being scared of not being armed, we're finally getting fucking scared of those who are armed. And we don't think the solution is more guns. In fact, we think the solution is to get rid of some of those guns.
Oh, sure, the NRA is pissing out its usual blustery bullshit, declaring that "Lines at Walmart will soon be replaced by lines at other retailers who are more supportive of America’s fundamental freedom." Really? Motherfuckers, this is Walmart. Walmart already ate the other stores. And you sure as shit ain't gettin' ol' Jesse to get on his old computer with the Confederate flag background and shop at Amazon, where Jeff Bezos makes up fake Russia news or whatever the fuck Trump is shoving in their ears. Nope, he's going back to Walmart because that's all he's got.
Walmart won't suffer any real backlash because the vast majority of the country supports the same thing, and that'll prompt more and more companies to follow suit. Supply and demand, motherfuckers, supply and demand. Maybe some of those corporations will even put their donation money where their mouth is and get GOP asses sent out to pasture (or to lobbying gigs). Republicans are essentially accessories to murder now. No company wants to be associated with that.
Goddamn, its fucked that we have to hope that capitalism will save our asses from Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump.
(Note: Gun nuts are gonna say, "What's a massacre gun? I've never heard of that." Fuck you. You know exactly what guns I'm talking about, assholes.)
And to make things even more pathetic, Walmart and Kroger, both of which have a huge presence in red state America, have taken action today that politicians won't take.
After a couple of mass shootings in their stores, Walmart announced that, in addition to previous steps like halting the sale of handguns and massacre guns, it's gonna stop selling handgun ammunition and "discontinue sales of short-barrel rifle ammunition such as the .223 caliber and 5.56 caliber that, while commonly used in some hunting rifles, can also be used in large capacity clips on military-style weapons." They even recognize that they're gonna lose a big chunk of sales, but, well, when you're a company worth hundreds of billions of dollars, you can afford to do something that might stop your customers from being killed.
Walmart also goes even further, though. Because idiots walking around with their big fucking rifles freak people out, Walmart is "respectfully requesting that customers no longer openly carry firearms into our stores or Sam’s Clubs in states where 'open carry' is permitted" unless you're a cop. Kroger, which is a multi-billion dollar supermarket chain based in Ohio, also put out a statement on open carry that said, in essence, "Jesus fuck, stop being such little pricks and leave your guns at home, you dumbass cowards." But they said it "respectfully." (Kroger is also being sued for negligence for allowing open carry in its stores, so it's got a bit of motivation there, too.)
The part that takes this to the next level of how deranged and out of touch Republicans have gotten is that both corporations are calling for gun control legislation. Walmart's CEO said, "We encourage our nation’s leaders to move forward and strengthen background checks and to remove weapons from those who have been determined to pose an imminent danger." Damn. He heavily suggested renewing the assault weapons ban and added that "We must also do more, as a country, to understand the root causes that lead to this type of violent behavior," which is a fuck of a lot stronger than just saying the words "mental illness" over and over.
In Kroger's statement, the company said much the same, as well as "Kroger has demonstrated with our actions that we recognize the growing chorus of Americans who are no longer comfortable with the status quo and who are advocating for concrete and common sense gun reforms."
You get it, you whores of the NRA in Congress? Two of the biggest retail corporations in the United States know that so many Americans support gun control that they don't give a shit if a few hyper-armed yahoos decide to buy their scratchy toilet paper over at the Piggly-Wiggly on the other side of town. They know that the country is shifting, and instead of being scared of not being armed, we're finally getting fucking scared of those who are armed. And we don't think the solution is more guns. In fact, we think the solution is to get rid of some of those guns.
Oh, sure, the NRA is pissing out its usual blustery bullshit, declaring that "Lines at Walmart will soon be replaced by lines at other retailers who are more supportive of America’s fundamental freedom." Really? Motherfuckers, this is Walmart. Walmart already ate the other stores. And you sure as shit ain't gettin' ol' Jesse to get on his old computer with the Confederate flag background and shop at Amazon, where Jeff Bezos makes up fake Russia news or whatever the fuck Trump is shoving in their ears. Nope, he's going back to Walmart because that's all he's got.
Walmart won't suffer any real backlash because the vast majority of the country supports the same thing, and that'll prompt more and more companies to follow suit. Supply and demand, motherfuckers, supply and demand. Maybe some of those corporations will even put their donation money where their mouth is and get GOP asses sent out to pasture (or to lobbying gigs). Republicans are essentially accessories to murder now. No company wants to be associated with that.
Goddamn, its fucked that we have to hope that capitalism will save our asses from Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump.
(Note: Gun nuts are gonna say, "What's a massacre gun? I've never heard of that." Fuck you. You know exactly what guns I'm talking about, assholes.)
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