My apologies for being a bit late with this week’s poll. Sometimes life 
just makes you crazy.
Today, we want to talk about “smart” guns. Would you ever buy one? Under what conditions? Why? Do you consider them risky? Do you think they’re cool?
Assume it’s a voluntary thing. No one is forcing you. They’re just something that is available on the market.
Enjoy, and feel free to comment.
We decided to have a little fun with this week’s Zelman Partisans poll, and let you use your imagination a bit.
Picture yourself in a zombie apocalypse, a la “The Walking Dead.” Zombies surround you, and the only way to kill them is to destroy their brains. You’re in it for the long haul. Survival is key. They can come at you in crowds, or one at a time. They’re slow, but fairly strong, and one bite means death. What kind of weapon will you choose?
Have fun!
After the 2012 massacre in Newtown, gun grabbers have consistently pushed for more gun control. Schools are already “gun-free” zones, where teachers and kids are easy prey for the armed psychotics roaming among us, but more and more colleges and universities are considering allowing armed students and professors to carry on campus.
My son’s school is better than most, but still not good enough. Those licensed to carry concealed can keep their firearms in their cars on campus, but cannot carry to class. If there’s an incident, students and professors must run to their cars – on a very vast campus – grab their tools of self defense and maybe make it back in time to stop the assailants. Most of the time, that wouldn’t be the case on a campus that large.
A serious conversation needs to be held about guns on school grounds and on campuses.
A chemistry professor at the Bacha Khan university near Peshawar, Pakistan a few days ago shielded his students by opening fire on a horde of militant Taliban scum after they opened fire at the school.
The father-of-two opened fire, giving them time to flee before he was cut down by gunfire as male and female students ran for their lives.
He was known to his pupils as ‘The Protector’ because he was a keen hunter and kept a 9mm pistol at school, possibly in light of previous militant attacks.
He was known as “The Protector.”
The majority of this country hands children over to schools – whether public, private, religious, etc. – on a daily basis every day. Those who homeschool can certainly take responsibility for their own kids and protect them should the excrement hit the oscillating blades. As for the rest…
Teachers, school administrators, armed officers, and the rest take responsibility for other people’s children every day. They should be accountable for their safety. They should be the protectors! And yet, our society disarms them and renders them completely worthless in the performance of that duty!
Locking children in a classroom, and praying that the armed derelict won’t be able to get in is not protection.
Having them cower under their desks is not protection.
Waiting on armed police to arrive, while the armed lunatic roams the halls is not protection.
Making the predator look like a bloody colander as soon as he steps in your line of fire? That’s protection.
Assistant chemistry professor Syed Hamid Husain at Bacha Khan University ordered his pupils to stay inside as he confronted the attackers with his own pistol. He died saving his students’ lives.
Teachers in that region of Pakistan were given permission to carry firearms in the classroom after Taliban militants massacred more than 150 people, the majority of them children, at a school in the city of Peshawar in 2014, according to the report.
Pakistan got it. Shouldn’t we?
Has anyone ever seen any problem at a gun show that required a mass police presence? Me neither. There have been a few accidents here and there, but nothing criminal that required an armed police response in recent memory.
That’s why a Pennsylvania Mayor’s hilariously impotent temper tantrum in response to an upcoming NRA-sponsored gun show’s refusal to fork over a 60 percent increase extortion in fees to hold the show in Harrisburg is so perplexing. Specifically, Mayor Eric Papenfuse is refusing to provide police security for the show.
Harrisburg police have provided security for the annual Great American Outdoors Show, scheduled this year for February 6-14, in the past. Mayor Eric Papenfuse said that the decision not to offer the department’s services this year was motivated in part by the NRA’s opposition to the city’s gun control policies.
“We have an epidemic of gun violence,” Papenfuse told WHTM. “It’s no secret that the NRA has worked against the city’s interests repeatedly over the past year causing us to spend tens of thousands of dollars to defend common sense gun ordinances. We don’t need to be doing them any favors.”
The NRA has already been paying Harrisburg $600,000, but Papenfuse wanted more ostensibly to provide police protection for the gun show. Police protection from what? Your guess is as good as mine. It’s probably Papenfuse’s passive/aggressive effort to close down the gun show by refusing to offer armed security. As if anyone really cares…
This is equally hysterical coming from a guy who in December 2012 pled guilty to exceeding the speed limit by 15 mph in a 25 mph zone – probably a residential one.
Hey, Eric! Did you know that nearly 34,000 people died in motor vehicle accidents in 2014? That makes your speeding through what was probably a residential neighborhood much more dangerous than the gun shows with their handful of 2014 accidents! It also makes your histrionic claim about children’s safety just a bit disingenuous, don’t you think?
Ooops!
In any case, I doubt that police presence at the gun show in Harrisburg will be needed.
Nice try, dimwit.
Some of you may have probably seen this before, but it bears putting here given Zero’s recent Executive Order bonanza.
I wrote recently about Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring’s unilateral move to ban reciprocity. Virginia, according to Herring’s diktat, will no longer recognize concealed carry permits from 25 other states.
The reaction from pro-rights advocates has been vicious, and in retaliation, the Virginia GOP has moved to defund Terry McAwful’s executive protection unit. Virginia state senator Bill Carrico proposed a budget amendment that could strip the anti-gun McAwful, who apparently has no problem working to disarm the very people who are the source of his power, and who has no problem using those same taxpayers’ money to protect his own worthless hide, of his protective detail. “If he’s so afraid of guns,”Carrico said, “then I’m not going to surround him with armed state policemen.”
However, it is instructive to see to whom McAwful and Herring are truly beholden, and John Richardson at No Lawyers – Only Guns and Money did just that.
Would it surprise anyone to know that both McAwful and Herring are beholden in no small part to former New York mayor and statist imbecile Michael Bloomberg? I didn’t think so.
Lo and behold the top donor to his campaign for Attorney General was none other than Independence USA PAC. They gave $1,292,417 of in-kind donations to his campaign. The money went for media production and advertising buys. To put this into perspective, the next two highest donors gave approximately half this amount each. The only candidate to get more money from that PAC was Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D-VA).
And would it surprise anyone to know that Independence USA PAC is Bloomberg’s personal vendetta against our Second Amendment rights, and is dedicated to helping to elect candidates who support stricter gun-control laws? It was founded in October 2012 by Michael Bloomberg, and, so far, has been entirely funded by the former New York City mayor, according to FactCheck.org.
When your politicians are paid for by nosy, authoritarian, meddling nanny statists this is what you can expect. Bloomberg bought himself Virginia’s governor and attorney general. Now all he needs to do is say the word, and they will bend over.
Meanwhile, criminals will continue to carry Glocks in their sagging pants, while law-abiding citizens from out of state will simply switch to open carry, as is legal all over the Commonwealth.
Mark Obenshain ran for Virginia’s Attorney General in 2013 and lost by a tiny, slim margin to a leftist, anti-Second Amendment authoritarian tool named Mark Herring, because apparently Virginia’s voters were somehow scared that their lady parts would be under the control of the EEEEVILLLL Republicans.
I know Obenshain personally, and he’s a solid pro-gun politician and a decent guy. Herring, on the other hand, is a statist nutbag who hasn’t met an anti-gun regulation he didn’t like. It is under his and Terry McAuliffe’s reign (Thanks, Trump, you buffoon, for giving thousands to elect that Clinton crony in my state!) that Virginia will no longer honor concealed carry permits from 25 other states.
Attorney General Mark R. Herring (D) announced Tuesday that Virginia will no longer recognize concealed carry handgun permits from 25 states that have reciprocity agreements with the commonwealth.
Under the policy, Virginians with a history of stalking, drug dealing or inpatient mental-health treatment cannot obtain a permit in a state with comparatively lax laws and carry a handgun legally at home.
Herring said severing the out-of-state agreements can prevent people who may be dangerous or irresponsible from carrying a concealed handgun.
Note the severe amount of stupid in that last statement. Herring actually thinks (if it can be called that) criminals who don’t obey laws in other states will miraculously obey Virginia’s.
Thanks a lot, vagina voters! You’ve given us authoritarian swine, for whom this is likely only the beginning! If they have their way, Virginia will soon be getting an “A” from the Brady Center, and you will be defending your giblets from armed thug invasion using only a spork and a cell phone.
I guess out-of-staters will simply open carry, as is legal all over the state.
On my own blog today, I synthesized all the information we had so far on the San Bernardino shooting into some hypotheses. I won’t copy/paste the entire thing here, but I will give you the bottom line and let you decide if you want to read my entire thought process.
I wrote this piece as events were unfolding. I also tried to take everything we knew then and know now into account when examining the events in San Bernardino. There are some strange details about this attack that make it seem like it was a bit more spontaneous than a normal jihadist attack. And if you actually read to the end, my assessment is that there may have been a bigger attack planned, but Farook probably lost his temper at the party and launched an unplanned, spontaneous attack on his coworkers, rather than waiting to execute a bigger event elsewhere that he and Malik probably planned. In essence, this is my attempt to analyze the actual details of the event and provide a deeper analysis than just “OMG JIHAD!”
Why do I think this was a case of a jihadist losing his temper and launching an attack early? Several reasons.
According to this CNN update, “Syed Rizwan Farook — one-half of the couple behind the San Bernardino shooting massacre — was apparently radicalized and in touch with people being investigated by the FBI for international terrorism.”
Given the large number of pipe bombs and lots of ammo found in their house, and given the fact that this guy and his wife were apparently radicalized, and that a band of Middle Eastern men have been reported to have been hanging around, I think they had something bigger planned. A bigger attack, perhaps, with IEDs and pipe bombs, that was abandoned when Farook stormed out of a holiday party in a rage.
I think these guys aren’t well known for self control. I think something angered him at the party, and he stormed out, went home, and decided to exact his revenge.
Meanwhile, I leave you with this bit of absolute stupidity.
Representative Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-CA) declared, “multi-automatic round weapons are easily available, even though not in California, but they can cross the state line” on Thursday’s broadcast of “MSNBC Live.”
Sanchez said, “the reality is that Congress has been trying to get at some of these issues for the last five years, and we haven’t been able to. We let the Assault Weapons Ban, which was led by our Senator Sen. Dianne Feinstein, we let that lapse. So, you know, multi-automatic round weapons are easily available, even though not in California, but they can cross the state line, as you know. The second thing is, we really haven’t done that much about mental health. I’ve been working with my colleague, Rep. Grace Napolitano (D) here out of the Los Angeles area, to try to get mental health services more available for people, and it hasn’t happened. And then lastly, there are a lot of loopholes in our current laws. So, we can ask people to be registered. We can have waiting periods. A lot of the law-abiding gun purveyors, sellers that sit in our districts, they are following those, but then we have this thing called gun shows, which come into town, sell everything, don’t do these background checks, and there are way too many problems in trying to get this done. And the Congress has a responsibility to close those loopholes, and make it safer for Americans.”
Someone please get me a Stupid to English dictionary, because I seem to lack the comprehension skills to understand what “multi automatic round weapons” are. Are those round guns that point directly back to the shooter? Are they a lot of automatic? Did she take her Lithium today before opening her maw and coming out with so much stupid, that the Man on the Moon is facepalming?
Who elected this creature?
Oh… nevermind. California.
In the aftermath of the Paris attacks, there’s been a lot of talk about terrorism, how to prevent it, how to fight it, and how to protect Americans. Even the DC Dominatrix Cathy Lanier has accidentally acknowledged that the citizens are the first line of defense against an attack. Of course, she continues to keep them disarmed, but admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery, right?
Presidential candidate Donald Trump has placed himself square in the middle of the conversation with another idiotic statement on guns. This time, he stepped on his own winky with golf cleats by claiming that those on the terrorism watchlist should be denied their right to keep and bear arms.
Now, I’ve always thought Trump was a fascist uber douche. Now, that has been confirmed. While I agree terrorists should be prevented from purchasing firearms (also caught and clubbed to death with spiked cricket bats), many of the people on the watchlist are hardly terrorists.
Of the 680,000 people caught up in the government’s Terrorist Screening Database—a watchlist of “known or suspected terrorists” that is shared with local law enforcement agencies, private contractors, and foreign governments—more than 40 percent are described by the government as having “no recognized terrorist group affiliation.” That category—280,000 people—dwarfs the number of watchlisted people suspected of ties to al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah combined.
These are people who have been convicted of nothing. They have been placed on this list, because according to the source, the standard the government uses to put people on a watchlist is “reasonable suspicion” to determine whether someone is a possible threat.
Because the government tracks “suspected terrorists” as well as “known terrorists,” individuals can be watchlisted if they are suspected of being a suspected terrorist, or if they are suspected of associating with people who are suspected of terrorism activity.
These are the people Trump wants to deprive of their rights. These are the people Trump would disarm and render vulnerable to everyone from terrorist to marauding thug. These are the people whom Trump wants to label as “enemies of the state” without due process, and without so much as an official set of charges.
Trump needs to go away. Far away. He shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the White House or anywhere near government service writ large. He’s a national embarrassment, who doesn’t understand policy and is merely running for president to stroke his own violently large ego.
It’s hard for me to believe that roughly a quarter of Republicans think this narcissistic weasel somehow deserves to be president! But then again, I think he appeals to the meathead faction of the GOP – you know – the ones who sit in their trailers, drinking cheap beer, scratching their shriveled raisins and screaming about how illegal aliens are taking their jobs, while the meth cooks on the stove.
Yes, I’m being intentionally inflammatory. That said, would anyone in all seriousness consider casting their vote for someone who is proud of his desire to stomp on people’s rights without due process?
So much FAIL!
During an interview on “60 Minutes” recently, Washington DC Police Chief Cathy Lanier said something surprising – at least to those of us who have followed her anti-freedom, gun-grabbery over the years. When asked about what DC citizens should do if an active shooter threatens them during a siege like the one that took place in Paris a couple of weeks ago, Lanier, whom I have previously described as the DC Dominatrix due to her heavy-handed hatred of gun rights and Second Amendment freedoms, replied “If you’re in a position to try to take the gunman down, to take the gunman out, it’s the best option for saving lives before police can get there,”
Take them out for what? Coffee? A drink?
Despite being spanked in the courts several times, DC still has some of the nation’s most stringent gun control laws. Fox News reports that of 233 applications sent for review since the Metropolitan Police Department began accepting permits on Oct. 23, 2014, 185 licenses had been denied as of Nov. 14.
Lanier has the final say about who can have guns in the city, and it looks like there are exactly 48 people in the entire city who have been granted permission to exercise their Second Amendment rights. Open carry is prohibited, and concealed carry is nearly nonexistent, with only 44 concealed carry applications having been approved since October 23, 2014. Virginia residents certainly can’t legally carry their tools of self defense in the city, and if they do, they risk arrest and having their lives destroyed by the very same police force whose head is now claiming that citizens need to be the ones who stand up to the horror!
So whom does Lanier expect to take up arms against terrorists until the cops can get there?
She certainly seems to be admitting that armed citizens are the first line of defense against attacks, and yet she refuses to free the residents of the nation’s capital to exercise their rights.
Such shocking cognitive dissonance from someone who is responsible for the safety and security of America’s capital! I wonder if the attacks in Paris were a wake-up call for Lanier, but somehow I doubt it.
