"... consider the effect of other big public service campaigns, which are especially successful when it’s clear the message comes down to saving lives... the seatbelt campaign... the “Friends Don’t Let Friends Drive Drunk” campaign... [the campaign against] cigarette use.... While in the pocket of the tobacco industry, Hollywood played a key role in glamorizing smoking, but then later, after paid tobacco product placement was banned, clamped down on the appearance of smoking on film and TV....
Sometimes, of course, a cigarette, like a gun, is key to a movie’s story line or characters. But the use of firearms onscreen can certainly be more intentional. Reaching for the gun in the course of storytelling isn’t always necessary. The best cinematic fight scene by far this year involved a weaponized fanny pack...."
They're still glamorizing violence! I would hate to see filmmakers pour their imagination into weaponizing more of the many ordinary objects that surround us.
I'll bet you can think of some deadly household items you've witnessed over the years. Help me make a list. I'll start with the Roald Dahl/Alfred Hitchcock frozen leg of lamb. And the phone is ringing for Grace Kelly:
Fuck the Left. No more negotiations about gun laws. Either enforce the laws we have on the books today, or don't, but they aren't getting any new ones with my agreement.
I would encourage the Dims to go full blast on this strategy. It has certainly worked well before, for Republicans. There seems to be only one sane political party and only a fraction of that.
Have any of these people looked at real world statistics and changes to the ownership and legalities of firearms since their LAST assault weapons law?
Millions of new gun owners, most states are at least "shall issue c states, and almost half are" constitutional carry" now. There are 5-10 million AR-15s in civilian hands now, up from 500k when Clinton was elected.
There has been a cultural revolution on firearms in the broader US, but since it has missed their blue city enclaves, they are ignorant about the forces they are fighting against.
And every time they push against us, we buy more guns and ammo.
What to do? Close the borders. Address "gun running" programs domestically and abroad. Deny the use of force for both self-defense and law enforcement. Mitigate medically-induced rage abortionists. Collect the primary weapon of diverse abortions/homicides: scalpels and blades generally, also planes, trains, and automobiles. Stop parading straw clowns in straw men's clothing. There is summer after Spring.
I have a friend who owns a lot of guns. It’s definitely a democrat mainly because his wife is super liberal. His wife makes a lot of gun control posts and even drags their kids to anti-gun protests. Yet, her household owns more guns than my entire neighborhood - the vast majority of those guns purchased without background check.
She will bite hook, line, and sinker for this sort of campaign.
My friend says he agrees with her but keeps buying guns.
Jason Bourne - Matt Damon - rolled up magazine, ballpoint pen, book Equalizer - Denzel Washington - corkscrew, hand drill, book John Wick - Keanu Reeves - a f***in pencil Accountant - Ben Afleck - thermos, belt
How about "what to do about Americans who dress in women's clothing?" "what to do about pedophiles?" "What to do about people who hate daylight savings time?"
Some are problems, some are not. While this is an opinion piece, some opinions are acceptable, while others are crimes.
LOTR: a guy's simple gold ring causes uncountable deaths. Ok, a bit more appropriately: Eiger Sanction: Clint Eastwood rolls up a magazine and clubs a guy insensate with it.
Demonization of gun owners and gun ownership has been going on my entire life, starting with the Kennedy assassination and subsequent outlawing of "mail order" firearms.
However, reality keeps intruding in the effort to paint the 100,000,000 or more law abiding gun owners of the US as imminent mass murderers living solely to drink the blood of their supposed political, racial, social class and HOA board "enemies."
A Florida hurricane, and the guns come out to deter looters. A race/gang riot, and the guns come out to deter violence. Antifa arrives to burn down your local city hall in a mostly peaceful protest, and the guns come out to express an opposing opinion on the wisdom of doing so.
The Left has demonstrated by its policies on crime, gangs, looters, riots, allowable protest activities, and how it treats its opponents, that guns are here to stay, legal or not.
In fact, a lot of common household items were used to kill people in Serial Mom. Off the top of my head, a car, scissors, hairspray and a lighter, a fireplace poker, the leg of lamb, and a pay phone handset. That's a lot of carnage for a comedy.
The essential problem all these idiots have is that they signally fail to understand the actual motivations behind weapons ownership. I don't own weapons because I have issues with my masculinity, I own weapons because I don't trust my fellow man any further than I can throw him. I especially don't trust him when he comes to me suggesting that I don't need weapons to protect myself from him, 'cos he "means well". Nope. Not on a bet would I disarm for that line of BS.
Humans are not the idealized creatures of Rousseau or any of the other fabulists believing in "man's inner good". They're mostly untrustworthy bastards who will bully, beat, and hurt you if you're weaker than they are. They're cruel, nasty things, in the aggregate, notwithstanding the relatively tiny percentage of decent people out there who won't automatically do those things to others who are weaker than they are.
I don't own guns because I have a small dick; I own guns because I know precisely what you other naked apes are like, when the lights go out. And, I refuse to disarm myself because of that fact. As a group, humans are bastards. I will retain the ability to kill those bastards in defense of my own life, and those that I care about, regardless of what the rest of you morons do. Disarmed populations always get what they deserve for their naivete, which is extinction or slavery to those who didn't fall for the con.
The problem with comparing gun messaging to "friends don't let friends drive drunk" is that the pro-gun side actually has a pretty compelling argument, unlike drunk drivers (at least when they're sober). If you invite those sorts of honest conversations (I've had them) there's a decent chance the non-gun owner winds up seeing the wisdom of owning a gun.
Also, equating gun ownership to drunk driving and smoking is just stupid and shows your political bias.
The left has always been outraged by "war toys", originally because war toys primed little boys to become the cannon-fodder of bourgeois imperialism, though today they fear little boys being primed to become men or Republicans. However, I've never heard of them being outraged over gun violence in the movies. Why is that?
One of God's small mercies: Americans never had to endure four or more years of First Lady Tipper. Perhaps in the future, as the consort of President Fido.
"The seatbelt campaign" was only successful when it became illegal to not wear one and became a lucrative source of government revenue.
And she already undercuts her argument by her references to Tipper and Nancy. We already know media-only campaigns don't work. And often, even with laws to back them up, government persuasion campaigns don't work.
Libs know what the answer is to school and societal violence. They just don't like that answer so they spend a lot of time trying to convince everyone else that what they know to be true, isn't.
Almost all gun violence is committed by two groups. #1 violent criminals who will continue to commit violence as long as they are free to do so. #2 mentally ill people who may or may not become violent again but it is more likely than not.
Both of these groups should be locked away for life or until it is certain the second group has been cured of whatever mental illness caused their violent outbursts. With both of these groups safely tucked away from society there would be almost no gun violence. The occasional relative that goes off and shoots up his family. That happens more when we normalize violence in society by mainstreaming criminals and the mentally ill. So the more the violent are locked up the less the rest of society is likely to descend to violence in the heat of the moment.
I'm not sure the sort of public-service ads the person is referring to ever really worked. Current ads against not wearing a seat belt or drunk driving mostly focus on the legal consequences you'll face for not following the rules (they point out that you'll get a ticket, have to pay a big fine, or go to jail). Likewise, a lot of people gave up smoking in the past 20 years not because of ad campaigns, but because laws and private regulations made it so inconvenient. (I don't think anti-smoking ads ever did anything but make smoking seem more cool. And in fact, print fashion and culture magazines have started running PRO-cigarette ads again.) Plus, there are still plenty of positive depictions of smoking in TV shows and movies -- either to signify that "this person is a sexy bad guy" or "this takes place in a glamorized version of the past." I don't think I've ever seen as much constant smoking, even in "Mad Men," as in the new series about Julia Child. (How did those people even taste the food?)
1) Defund the police; 2) De-prosecute crime; 3) Disarm the populace.
These would be the proposals of someone who lives in a secure community and really, really hates the working and middle-class people who live outside the gates. What is the end game here?
Our society glorifies violence. Violent movies didn't cause the shooting, but it is saddening how much we dedicate our time to watching violent acts portrayed for our entertainment. My family decided to go on a "fast" and skip any kind of violent movies or shows for a month. I don't need anyone telling me that violent movies can honor heroes, etc. The fact is we are addicted to these stories, and if you find yourself unable to sit down and watch anything without it involving people getting pretend-killed for your entertainment, maybe there's a problem here.
People generally see landscape items serving only one need and otherwise innocuous. Heaven help us if, for example, terrorists discover the "box cutters" function as a knife and use them to hijack an airplane. They may thereby sneak lethal weapons on an airplane and then crash them into buildings.
I'm sure that by not talking about guns and not showing guns that no one will notice that driving a truck into a crowd can kill people, and that crashing a plane into a building can kill a lot of people too.
Phew! What a relief that they are on the case! I'm gonna subscribe to receive more such pearls of wisdom!
Indeed, is it really better that Heath Ledger's Joker used a pencil to kill a person rather than when he used a gun? Or how about Lily Tomlin's Violet putting rat poison in her boss's coffee.
Perhaps we should ask the question, what to do about American's love of newspapers? Personally, I think the creation of 24-hour news and the pushing of internet news as constant notifications has caused more societal harm than guns. I've lost more personal relationships due to over-reaction to a news event that didn't actually affect me or the relation beyond the emotion invoked by journalist's account of the news. This includes people being upset by which movie was watched because some journalist deemed it unacceptable.
Virtually anything could be a lethal weapon. You could drown someone in a bowl of soup if that were all you had handy.
The problem with Paul's analogies is that people already knew they should wear their seatbelt, people already knew smoking is bad for you. That is, the campaigns weren't about changing minds so much as getting people to care more about something they basically already agreed with. Guns present an entirely different situation. Hollywood might be able to help, but I doubt it given their past performance in anti-gun filmmaking and their screaming hypocrisy on pretty much any moral issue.
"What if we got more ambitious with the messaging and went after gun ownership itself?... Before you shut this down as Tipper Gore territory or just say no to Nancy Reagan 2.0 consider the effect of other big public service campaigns, which are especially successful when it’s clear the message comes down to saving lives... the seatbelt campaign... the “Friends Don’t Let Friends Drive Drunk” campaign
"Friends don't let friends be victims", which is what happens when you aren't armed.
After watching the cops do nothing while BLM rioted, there's not the slightest chance in the world you're going to get a voting majority against gun ownership
Because the majority of Americans aren't insane, and you have to be insane to trust your life to the police
Hey, the bald guy in the fanny pack fight scene is from Martial Club on YouTube. Awesome.
As for Pamela's idea of trying to make guns "uncool" to stop gun violence, well, that's pretty stupid. But I'll take it over people trying to leverage the government to take guns away forcibly.
It's kind of interesting to see how a mind that is fundamentally unrealistic approaches what it perceives as a problem. But you will note that all of her examples - seat belts, cigarettes, drunk driving -- involve changing a person's behavior in ways that improve his own life chances. There are more guns in America than Americans, and it's not because we're just too lazy to get rid of them.
Knives. Icepicks. Hammers. Small statues or other solid objects. Canes. A robe belt or electric cord. Hands and the homicidal impulse. Screwdrivers. And on and on.
There's a reason for that saying that "Those things are only tools, I am the weapon."
Grab guns and make cars too expensive to drive, along with introducing bugs as cheap, available protein (except for babies who get nothing) while the air conditioning fails in South and (later on) the furnaces in the north? That's "more ambition" for you. But whose? Mr. Nobody, I think. It's decentralized greenie ambition and power grabbing. The different regulatory agencies have gone rogue in the absence of a President. The pathetic fool ambling through the White House is not in control, regulatory types see the presence of absence at the top and separately on separate axes they crank toward a center of disaster. Then they'll say: "Who me, I just closed down a factory I thought was dirty, happens all the time, I have a buddy shut down meatpackers during Covid, I said I'll show you regulation and wham, no baby food, now that's ambitious, that's regulation!!" etc. Let's just make sure that they live the same life they are condemning us too. No AC in DC.
Lord deliver us from the tyranny of those who sincerely think it is for the good of their victims.
Pamela, you do nothing at all about people who love their guns. They're not the problem; unless the problem is that they're in the way of you getting a policy you want.
A gun is not a lover, an object of affection, it is a tool. People own them because when seconds count, the police are only minutes (or an hour) away. Also, because criminals who repeatedly commit violent crimes are released again and again in places like New York (Home of The New York Times) to continue their depredations against the law-abiding. People in New York may not be able to own guns, due to onerous laws and regulations, but residents of other, redder states are more fortunate. How about instead of advocating for gun control, these twits advocate for criminal control and psychopath control?
Ultimately, the Second Amendment protects all our other rights. Indeed the Constitution itself.
Seatbelts, which are at worst a minor inconvenience with great upside, "enjoy" a 90-percent compliance rate. That's 33 million Americans who don't go along with and easy tweak.
"Abandoning" guns is not easy, and it is not a "tweak", but is instead a fundamental issue of not only personal and family safety, but freedom itself. In 30 years, violent crimes against women -- mostly sexual assaults -- declined by 50 to 70 percent once concealed carry became widely possible.
Gun grabbers are rape and robbery facilitators. They should be dea;lt with accordingly.
Are they willing to explain exactly WHY they don't want me owning a gun? No? Well fuck right off, then.
Are they willing to explain HOW Salvador Ramos got the $3-5,000 to purchase the two guns? He worked part time at Wendy's. No, not willing to explain? Well fuck right off then.
Are they willing to explain WHO taught Ramos how to use the guns? You don't learn that from YouTube video. (Right Howard?) No? Well fuck right off then.
Meanwhile, almost 40 million NICS background checks in both 2020 and 2021. That probably means 50 million guns sold each year, since you can buy multiple guns with one NICS background check, and in maybe a dozen states, like MT here, CCW permit holders are exempt, because they get their FBI background check when acquiring or renewing their permits. Maybe 100 million new guns in this country. Thank you AntiFA, BLM, and the Dem party in general.
I have often wondered about the ability of popular media (TV, movies, videogames) to trigger the nutcases out there. How many movies and TV shows depict someone pulling out a fully auto firearm (which are illegal by the way) and spraying death and mayhem about them. What might happen if one were to see the use of more mundane items such as a softball bat, hammer, cane, wrench, scissors, screwdriver, frying pan, etc. used as murder weapons. What about depicting driving motor vehicles into crowds? We have all seen the movie where the car chase goes down a sidewalk with people fleeing left and right, all unharmed. Not very realistic. If someone actually did that, you would have dead bodies everywhere. The miscreant could claim it was a case of unintended acceleration and might even get off scott free.
I have also thought it might be a good idea to prohibit the use of or the depiction of the use of fully auto or semi-auto firearms in movies, TV, or video games. Would the number of mental cases going off the deep end decline? Of course this will never go because it would cripple Hollywood. They would have to return to the days of good stories along with well-crafted plots and dialogue. Something they haven't done in decades.
While many gun owners "love" their guns much of the recent buying surge was for self-defense (rioting in the street followed by government inaction) which is not significantly influenced by Hollywood. I believe Hollywood thinks too highly of itself.
Yes yes Hollywood glamorizes violence. They LOVE guns! They love to play with their guns. They love dramatic scenes where the character slowly aims and cocks and taunts victims before shooting them with their guns. They are obsessed with lavishing screen time on guns and the violence guns allow.
I never "play" with my guns. Sometimes I do target practice and at least as often I clean them, but I've never pointed mine at anyone. Alec Baldwin loves playing with his cowboy guns! Alec treats his like a harmless toy, even though it is a dangerous GUN. Even now having killed someone he appears to show less remorse than I do when I find a dead bird in the yard. IF Hollywood had the balls to disarm themselves completely onscreen and off, then I would be willing to debate the 2nd Amendment with these assholes.
But they won't and I don't and they can fuck right off with the "new" conversation, which to misquote the Who, is "just like the old conversation." Disarm me? Disarm YOU!
Note to Althouse: the list of alternative weapons I can recall from Movies and TV is too long to remember, but a brief start would be knives, bats, cars, bombs, glass windows, long drops, steam-rollers, suffocation, hanging by rope, hanging by sheet, poison, chunks of steel, chunks of concrete...
Barbara Bel Geddes could swing a mean leg of lanb--and then cook and serve it to the cops. Loved that episode. And I've survived almost 57 years of marriage because my wife buys only boneless legs of lamb.
This is a funtastical idea. Perhaps it will finally bring on the Civil War that the Obesity Army of the Deplorable States of America keeps threatening. I can hear the battle cry: "To the Moon, Alice"
Guns in movies have nothing to do with violence. Heroes and villains handle guns because they're not allowed to fondle their penises.
Or, in the case of Halle Berry in Die Another Day, because she is naturally penis free. So she had to be given a substitute. And then, when she screws on the silencer...
While I think such things as violent video games (I've never seen one myself as I have lots better things to do than play games on our PC... but then I'm 67) and such movies as John Wick where I can say as a gun guy and martial artist I am impressed with his technique but... the whole show is about an assassin that kills off hundreds of other assassins!
All this does have an influence with a young person. BUT a very very poor childhood, domestic violence, sex assault, lack of any guidance by a father figure (most didn't have one growing up in their lives) etc... are far more likely to have set the stage.
You see this with inner city kids that join gangs... drugs, violence, weapons, zero respect for anyone... and like Chicago, just lots of killings (don't say 'gun violence'... a lot of them are killed by other methods than just guns.)
Then add to that the few people they know don't give a shit what they are doing or saying... most of them tell others at least some of their plans.
And then 'gun free zones'.. like schools.. are not gun free. And as we see demonstrated in Ulvade, the 'lockdown' system is not all that well rehearsed. And those LEOs showing up not all that motivated.
Now about guns themselves... since juvenile records are closed and cannot be accessed to check backgrounds.. and the NCIS system is dependent on 'voluntary' compliance by local governments, states, federal entities, etc... not all the people barred are... barred!!!
Ban guns? Well don't we kind of forget what just happened in the Ukraine? You know the Russian invasion.. the Ukraine having to pass out tens of thousands of AK-47s cause folks over the don't own anything like that? And our own very Southern Border??? The 'invasion' we have going on now with drug runners, murderers, thieves, nuts, etc.. able to walk right across the border?
No, I am not giving you any real solutions.. but just showing you the problem is not .. guns. It is far far more than that.
This idea will fail and the reason it will fail is that leftists assume everyone shares their moral outlook. They see gun ownership as a vice, gun owners see it as a virtue.
Sure, go ahead and open up that can of worms. These clowns have no idea what they are going to instigate. They are sure, absolutely certain that the rest of America is just like them. The " bubble " isn't protection against the push back.
This view is predicated on the assumption that guns are only a threat to public health, like smoking is. But that view is wrong. The CDC's review of defensive gun use puts the number of defensive gun uses at between 550,000 and 2 million annually. That's a lot of people who were not robbed, raped, assaulted, or killed through guns.
Remember, the right to bear arms in the Constitution is different wording of the same right in the UN Declaration of Human Rights: the Right to Self-defense.
Then I'd reckon we'd have to point out the disproportionate gun violence in the black community - day in - day out. Killin babies in the womb and on the porch and on the sofa with their savage drive bys. Day in - day out. No Respite.
Wham, bam, slash, dash, with relief is the method of choice in diverse and inclusive rites of criminal torts and aborts. Violence of Gun (VOG) is a minority action that is relative and rarely progressive.
De-platforming, speech policing, social ostracization, censorship and so forth worked on these lefties. They toe the line in their politically correct environments and they believe it makes them good. They seem to think they can do the same thing to our entire culture and us deplorables will change our ways, but they forget we're also irredeemable. All it's gonna do is irritate us.
If the Republicans had any stones and any integrity to would amend the Democrat gun control bill(s)with the nobilities clause stating no one is entitled to armed protection and include all law enforcement agencies at all levels of government and no armed protection for any government official. Let the Dems argue why some of them are special but you aren't.
Hey, how about a blue ribbon for Darrell Brooks, who killed 6 and injured 63 completely innocent folks, young and old, with an SUV at CHRISTMAS! That is qualification for special recognition right there. There should also be a category for the Soros D.A.s. They kill a lot of people via early release/under charging maniacs.
Under the original intent and meaning of the Second Amendment, which has never been amended, it should be possible for any American citizen to own and operate a fully crewed and armed Ford class aircraft carrier.
"Americans who love their guns" aren't the fucking problem. Psychopaths are. These are the not the same people.
Why is it that Democrats believe that if regular people just heard more one-sided anti-factual lectures from elitist gasbags and celebrities they would simply see the light and realize the thing they enjoy is wrong? These idiots like Pamela Paul need to get out of our their Ivy-cloistered bubbles once in awhile.
Gahrie said... Under the original intent and meaning of the Second Amendment, which has never been amended, it should be possible for any American citizen to own and operate a fully crewed and armed Ford class aircraft carrier.
********************
Yeah, Gahrie, there's lots of legal precedent for your position.
People have a right, and have always had it under the 2nd, to "keep and bear" their own army and navy.
Tom said... What if we changed our laws that made any felony assault or worse = life in prison? What if we enacted zero tolerance for non-defensive violence? ************
How many thousands of new prisons do we think we would need for all those lifers?
Of the two essays about guns etc at the NYT this morning, I preferred Ross Douthat's to this one (which I only read via Althouse's post). As someone wrote earlier, the Pamela Pauls of the world see gun ownership and their use as a vice; pft.
So I would like to see experiments with age-based impediments rather than full restrictions — allowing would-be gun purchasers 25 and under the same rights of ownership as 40- or 60-year-olds, but with more substantial screenings before a purchase. Not just a criminal-background check, in other words, but some kind of basic social or psychological screening, combining a mental-health check, a social-media audit and testimonials from two competent adults — all subject to the same appeals process as a well-designed red-flag law.
I watched both scenes posted. The fanny belt scene was entertaining and moved so fast that you didn't question its plausibility, but it's not a scene to ponder. Jump cuts are the most dangerous weapon known to film editors ....The Grace Kelly scene was also entertaining. I believed in the diaphanous nightgown, but I think even a trained surgeon would have difficulty in inflicting a moral wound under such circumstances and with such an instrument.....Guns are the most credible instrument of cinematic death. You don't special effects or breakaway furniture. Point and shoot. Even a low budget film like the Alec Baldwin one was able to film an utterly realistic murder scene without resort to jump cuts or the distraction of diaphanous gowns.
chuck said... I'd be happy if the Democrats stopped promoting violence, and revolution. They have been doing that for the last twenty years or so.
There it is! Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks, was a Democrat! I knew there was a reason why he has been kept safe at Guantanamo.
@Gahrie - "Under the original intent and meaning of the Second Amendment, which has never been amended, it should be possible for any American citizen to own and operate a fully crewed and armed Ford class aircraft carrier."
That'd be ... interesting. Especially how you'd pay for the upkeep. (As any boat owner knows, they're floating money pits. And an aircraft carrier is a VERY big one that needs a whole lotta money thrown at it regularly...)
But I agree. If you can keep it up to a reasonable standard. And with the Russians, we've seen what happens if you don't. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_aircraft_carrier_Admiral_Kuznetsov
To everyone who wants to mock Gahrie’s constitutional analysis I assembled a complete list of weapons that were illegal to own at the time the Bill of Rights was written:
gadfly said... "chuck said... I'd be happy if the Democrats stopped promoting violence, and revolution. They have been doing that for the last twenty years or so.
There it is! Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks, was a Democrat! I knew there was a reason why he has been kept safe at Guantanamo." Zoooom!! Right over your empty little head.
Those of us who prefer a free society over a regimented one would rather ask, "What should we do with people who love the State?" It's always been a puzzle to me why anyone in his/her right mind would want to be a disarmed serf.
effinayright said... Gahrie said... Under the original intent and meaning of the Second Amendment, which has never been amended, it should be possible for any American citizen to own and operate a fully crewed and armed Ford class aircraft carrier.
********************
Yeah, Gahrie, there's lots of legal precedent for your position.
People have a right, and have always had it under the 2nd, to "keep and bear" their own army and navy.
Totes reasonable.
SNORT
Yes, indeed there is. From the national PArk Service on privateers:
Although the documentation is incomplete, about 1,700 Letters of Marque, issued on a per-voyage basis, were granted during the American Revolution. Nearly 800 vessels were commissioned as privateers and are credited with capturing or destroying about 600 British ships.
Vessels of every size and description were pressed into service as privateers. At the upper end of the scale was the 600-ton, 26-gun ship Caesar of Boston. At the other end was the 8-ton boat Defense of Falmouth, Massachusetts. Crews ranged from a few men in a whaleboat to more than 200 aboard a large, fully equipped privateer. Two-masted schooners and brigantines were most often used in privateering, reflecting the kind of vessels available to American seamen.
The upper end would be roughly equivalent of a British Navy 5th rate ship of the line at the time.
Yeah, Gahrie, there's lots of legal precedent for your position.
People have a right, and have always had it under the 2nd, to "keep and bear" their own army and navy.
Totes reasonable.
U.S. Constitution; Article II Section 8: "The Congress shall have Power ... To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water"
Letters of Marque and Reprisal are given by the government to private citizens to allow them to wage war on enemy shipping using privately owned, crewed and equipped warships. The Founders granted this power to Congress on the assumption that there would be privately owned warships to use them. Congress has in fact granted such Letters in the past, and can do so again, anytime they want.
Not only is there legal precedent, there are historical examples.
People have a right, and have always had it under the 2nd, to "keep and bear" their own army and navy.
The American Revolution started with the march on Lexington and Concord. This was an attempt to seize privately owned cannons and ammunition.
During the Spanish-American war, the Rough Riders were armed with privately owned weapons, and were better armed than regular US Army units, including Gatling guns.
gadfly said... chuck said... I'd be happy if the Democrats stopped promoting violence, and revolution. They have been doing that for the last twenty years or so.
There it is! Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks, was a Democrat! I knew there was a reason why he has been kept safe at Guantanamo.
6/1/22, 10:37 PM
Khalid is being treated a HELL of a lot better than the American citizens rotting away in the DC gulag for trespassing.
“I'd be happy if the Democrats stopped promoting violence, and revolution. They have been doing that for the last twenty years or so”
What must be kept in mind is that much of the gun purchasing, esp the maybe 50 million (at least 40 million based on NICS background checks) guns purchased in both 2020 and 2021 were in direct response to this promotion of violence by Democrats. We are talking their support of AntiFA and BLM, while at the same time trying to Defund The Police, while prosecuting them for using the force necessary to maintain order. We aren’t talking the normal gun lovers in rural America, who are already armed up fairly well, but people like Ann who looked at buying guns for maybe the first time in their lives, thanks to the intentional breakdown of law and order on the part of Democrats in power. Those of us who were already gun owners just moaned about the cost and unavailability of ammunition.
My theory is that the Dem leadership are trying to intimidate their base constituency to support them, through the threat of violence. And the out, the alternative to this, that esp urban dwellers, but also suburbanites, see is to arm up, to protect themselves and their families, when their police won’t, or aren’t allowed to protect them. The Dem leadership’s response is to try to keep guns out of their hands, in order to keep them subjugated. They need their core constituencies to stay afraid, very afraid, in order to impose their power grabbing initiatives. Gun ownership is a safety valve that Dem politicians don’t want their core constituencies to have.
How many thousands of new prisons do we think we would need for all those lifers? ========== can they be used in flyover to harvest veggies for the coasties?
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Fuck the Left. No more negotiations about gun laws. Either enforce the laws we have on the books today, or don't, but they aren't getting any new ones with my agreement.
So Serious Question
Will this Ad Campaign target NORDICS too? Or is it just white people we'll be aiming at?
What can we do about people that know nothing about what they claim to be experts on? And their lies that adversely impact society at large.
I would encourage the Dims to go full blast on this strategy. It has certainly worked well before, for Republicans. There seems to be only one sane political party and only a fraction of that.
Have any of these people looked at real world statistics and changes to the ownership and legalities of firearms since their LAST assault weapons law?
Millions of new gun owners, most states are at least "shall issue c states, and almost half are" constitutional carry" now. There are 5-10 million AR-15s in civilian hands now, up from 500k when Clinton was elected.
There has been a cultural revolution on firearms in the broader US, but since it has missed their blue city enclaves, they are ignorant about the forces they are fighting against.
And every time they push against us, we buy more guns and ammo.
What to do? Close the borders. Address "gun running" programs domestically and abroad. Deny the use of force for both self-defense and law enforcement. Mitigate medically-induced rage abortionists. Collect the primary weapon of diverse abortions/homicides: scalpels and blades generally, also planes, trains, and automobiles. Stop parading straw clowns in straw men's clothing. There is summer after Spring.
I have a friend who owns a lot of guns. It’s definitely a democrat mainly because his wife is super liberal. His wife makes a lot of gun control posts and even drags their kids to anti-gun protests. Yet, her household owns more guns than my entire neighborhood - the vast majority of those guns purchased without background check.
She will bite hook, line, and sinker for this sort of campaign.
My friend says he agrees with her but keeps buying guns.
Jason Bourne - Matt Damon - rolled up magazine, ballpoint pen, book
Equalizer - Denzel Washington - corkscrew, hand drill, book
John Wick - Keanu Reeves - a f***in pencil
Accountant - Ben Afleck - thermos, belt
"what to do about..."
As if that's the problem which needs solving.
How about "what to do about Americans who dress in women's clothing?" "what to do about pedophiles?" "What to do about people who hate daylight savings time?"
Some are problems, some are not. While this is an opinion piece, some opinions are acceptable, while others are crimes.
"They're still glamorizing violence!"
Let's glamorize sex instead.
Of course, deglamorizing is just a step in "going after gun ownership itself."
Which is fine with me, provided that Dems show they can do it in the inner cities first. Shut down "gun violence" there, and we'll talk.
LOTR: a guy's simple gold ring causes uncountable deaths.
Ok, a bit more appropriately: Eiger Sanction: Clint Eastwood rolls up a magazine and clubs a guy insensate with it.
Shame me as a gun slut. It hurts, but I kinda like it.
Violence is narratives is symbolic for renewal or change. That's how they're narratives.
Demonization of gun owners and gun ownership has been going on my entire life, starting with the Kennedy assassination and subsequent outlawing of "mail order" firearms.
However, reality keeps intruding in the effort to paint the 100,000,000 or more law abiding gun owners of the US as imminent mass murderers living solely to drink the blood of their supposed political, racial, social class and HOA board "enemies."
A Florida hurricane, and the guns come out to deter looters.
A race/gang riot, and the guns come out to deter violence.
Antifa arrives to burn down your local city hall in a mostly peaceful protest, and the guns come out to express an opposing opinion on the wisdom of doing so.
The Left has demonstrated by its policies on crime, gangs, looters, riots, allowable protest activities, and how it treats its opponents, that guns are here to stay, legal or not.
Not sure the cigarette analogy works here. After Hollywood's scolding, the black community seems to have carried on as usual.
Not sure the cigarette analogy works here. After Hollywood's scolding, the black community seems to have carried on as usual.
In Serial Mom Kathleen Turner bludgeons someone to death with a leg of lamb.
It fairly graphic and definitely NSFW.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdQ2OzxLN0c
The most obvious one if we're looking for a household item capable of a massacre would be a chainsaw.
In fact, a lot of common household items were used to kill people in Serial Mom. Off the top of my head, a car, scissors, hairspray and a lighter, a fireplace poker, the leg of lamb, and a pay phone handset. That's a lot of carnage for a comedy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKb9x-MAG3s&t=1s
The essential problem all these idiots have is that they signally fail to understand the actual motivations behind weapons ownership. I don't own weapons because I have issues with my masculinity, I own weapons because I don't trust my fellow man any further than I can throw him. I especially don't trust him when he comes to me suggesting that I don't need weapons to protect myself from him, 'cos he "means well". Nope. Not on a bet would I disarm for that line of BS.
Humans are not the idealized creatures of Rousseau or any of the other fabulists believing in "man's inner good". They're mostly untrustworthy bastards who will bully, beat, and hurt you if you're weaker than they are. They're cruel, nasty things, in the aggregate, notwithstanding the relatively tiny percentage of decent people out there who won't automatically do those things to others who are weaker than they are.
I don't own guns because I have a small dick; I own guns because I know precisely what you other naked apes are like, when the lights go out. And, I refuse to disarm myself because of that fact. As a group, humans are bastards. I will retain the ability to kill those bastards in defense of my own life, and those that I care about, regardless of what the rest of you morons do. Disarmed populations always get what they deserve for their naivete, which is extinction or slavery to those who didn't fall for the con.
The problem with comparing gun messaging to "friends don't let friends drive drunk" is that the pro-gun side actually has a pretty compelling argument, unlike drunk drivers (at least when they're sober). If you invite those sorts of honest conversations (I've had them) there's a decent chance the non-gun owner winds up seeing the wisdom of owning a gun.
Also, equating gun ownership to drunk driving and smoking is just stupid and shows your political bias.
I'd be happy if the Democrats stopped promoting violence, and revolution. They have been doing that for the last twenty years or so.
The left has always been outraged by "war toys", originally because war toys primed little boys to become the cannon-fodder of bourgeois imperialism, though today they fear little boys being primed to become men or Republicans. However, I've never heard of them being outraged over gun violence in the movies. Why is that?
Tipper Gore territory
One of God's small mercies: Americans never had to endure four or more years of First Lady Tipper. Perhaps in the future, as the consort of President Fido.
"The seatbelt campaign" was only successful when it became illegal to not wear one and became a lucrative source of government revenue.
And she already undercuts her argument by her references to Tipper and Nancy. We already know media-only campaigns don't work. And often, even with laws to back them up, government persuasion campaigns don't work.
Libs know what the answer is to school and societal violence. They just don't like that answer so they spend a lot of time trying to convince everyone else that what they know to be true, isn't.
God forbid women living alone have more than scissors to defend themselves with.
My guess is Pamela does not know anyone who drives a pickup truck.
Almost all gun violence is committed by two groups. #1 violent criminals who will continue to commit violence as long as they are free to do so. #2 mentally ill people who may or may not become violent again but it is more likely than not.
Both of these groups should be locked away for life or until it is certain the second group has been cured of whatever mental illness caused their violent outbursts. With both of these groups safely tucked away from society there would be almost no gun violence. The occasional relative that goes off and shoots up his family. That happens more when we normalize violence in society by mainstreaming criminals and the mentally ill. So the more the violent are locked up the less the rest of society is likely to descend to violence in the heat of the moment.
I'm not sure the sort of public-service ads the person is referring to ever really worked. Current ads against not wearing a seat belt or drunk driving mostly focus on the legal consequences you'll face for not following the rules (they point out that you'll get a ticket, have to pay a big fine, or go to jail). Likewise, a lot of people gave up smoking in the past 20 years not because of ad campaigns, but because laws and private regulations made it so inconvenient. (I don't think anti-smoking ads ever did anything but make smoking seem more cool. And in fact, print fashion and culture magazines have started running PRO-cigarette ads again.) Plus, there are still plenty of positive depictions of smoking in TV shows and movies -- either to signify that "this person is a sexy bad guy" or "this takes place in a glamorized version of the past." I don't think I've ever seen as much constant smoking, even in "Mad Men," as in the new series about Julia Child. (How did those people even taste the food?)
What do we do about people who love their pulpits?
1) Defund the police; 2) De-prosecute crime; 3) Disarm the populace.
These would be the proposals of someone who lives in a secure community and really, really hates the working and middle-class people who live outside the gates. What is the end game here?
Our society glorifies violence. Violent movies didn't cause the shooting, but it is saddening how much we dedicate our time to watching violent acts portrayed for our entertainment. My family decided to go on a "fast" and skip any kind of violent movies or shows for a month. I don't need anyone telling me that violent movies can honor heroes, etc. The fact is we are addicted to these stories, and if you find yourself unable to sit down and watch anything without it involving people getting pretend-killed for your entertainment, maybe there's a problem here.
Lamb is available on line here: https://vimeo.com/426676438
A horse so long out of the barn that the barn itself is falling into decay.
This is known as "functional fixedness" in the research literature:
https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-functional-fixedness-2795484
People generally see landscape items serving only one need and otherwise innocuous. Heaven help us if, for example, terrorists discover the "box cutters" function as a knife and use them to hijack an airplane. They may thereby sneak lethal weapons on an airplane and then crash them into buildings.
I'm sure that by not talking about guns and not showing guns that no one will notice that driving a truck into a crowd can kill people, and that crashing a plane into a building can kill a lot of people too.
Phew! What a relief that they are on the case! I'm gonna subscribe to receive more such pearls of wisdom!
Indeed, is it really better that Heath Ledger's Joker used a pencil to kill a person rather than when he used a gun? Or how about Lily Tomlin's Violet putting rat poison in her boss's coffee.
Perhaps we should ask the question, what to do about American's love of newspapers? Personally, I think the creation of 24-hour news and the pushing of internet news as constant notifications has caused more societal harm than guns. I've lost more personal relationships due to over-reaction to a news event that didn't actually affect me or the relation beyond the emotion invoked by journalist's account of the news. This includes people being upset by which movie was watched because some journalist deemed it unacceptable.
In a movie version, JD’s character can attack Heard’s character with her makeup kit. 🤭
From "What to Do About Americans Who Love Their Guns" by Pamela Paul (NYT).
Leave us alone.
You all will leave us alone and stop bothering us. One way or another.
Virtually anything could be a lethal weapon. You could drown someone in a bowl of soup if that were all you had handy.
The problem with Paul's analogies is that people already knew they should wear their seatbelt, people already knew smoking is bad for you. That is, the campaigns weren't about changing minds so much as getting people to care more about something they basically already agreed with. Guns present an entirely different situation. Hollywood might be able to help, but I doubt it given their past performance in anti-gun filmmaking and their screaming hypocrisy on pretty much any moral issue.
does that mean Americans can rent guns; get them delivered by drones and be happy as in You will own nothing and You will be happy
The fight scene in Grosse Pointe Blank at the high school reunion is very good and realistic. John Cusack uses a pen to kill the assassin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u63lA_daetU
"What if we got more ambitious with the messaging and went after gun ownership itself?... Before you shut this down as Tipper Gore territory or just say no to Nancy Reagan 2.0 consider the effect of other big public service campaigns, which are especially successful when it’s clear the message comes down to saving lives... the seatbelt campaign... the “Friends Don’t Let Friends Drive Drunk” campaign
"Friends don't let friends be victims", which is what happens when you aren't armed.
After watching the cops do nothing while BLM rioted, there's not the slightest chance in the world you're going to get a voting majority against gun ownership
Because the majority of Americans aren't insane, and you have to be insane to trust your life to the police
Hey, the bald guy in the fanny pack fight scene is from Martial Club on YouTube. Awesome.
As for Pamela's idea of trying to make guns "uncool" to stop gun violence, well, that's pretty stupid. But I'll take it over people trying to leverage the government to take guns away forcibly.
It's not the same.
When somebody attacks you or breaks into your house, a cigarette or a beer won't help you much.
It's kind of interesting to see how a mind that is fundamentally unrealistic approaches what it perceives as a problem. But you will note that all of her examples - seat belts, cigarettes, drunk driving -- involve changing a person's behavior in ways that improve his own life chances. There are more guns in America than Americans, and it's not because we're just too lazy to get rid of them.
Knives. Icepicks. Hammers. Small statues or other solid objects. Canes. A robe belt or electric cord. Hands and the homicidal impulse. Screwdrivers. And on and on.
There's a reason for that saying that "Those things are only tools, I am the weapon."
1. Plastic bag over the head in The Godfather.
2."What if we got more ambitious?"
Grab guns and make cars too expensive to drive, along with introducing bugs as cheap, available protein (except for babies who get nothing) while the air conditioning fails in South and (later on) the furnaces in the north? That's "more ambition" for you. But whose? Mr. Nobody, I think. It's decentralized greenie ambition and power grabbing. The different regulatory agencies have gone rogue in the absence of a President. The pathetic fool ambling through the White House is not in control, regulatory types see the presence of absence at the top and separately on separate axes they crank toward a center of disaster. Then they'll say: "Who me, I just closed down a factory I thought was dirty, happens all the time, I have a buddy shut down meatpackers during Covid, I said I'll show you regulation and wham, no baby food, now that's ambitious, that's regulation!!" etc.
Let's just make sure that they live the same life they are condemning us too. No AC in DC.
That's one sharp pair of scissors!
Lord deliver us from the tyranny of those who sincerely think it is for the good of their victims.
Pamela, you do nothing at all about people who love their guns. They're not the problem; unless the problem is that they're in the way of you getting a policy you want.
A gun is not a lover, an object of affection, it is a tool. People own them because when seconds count, the police are only minutes (or an hour) away. Also, because criminals who repeatedly commit violent crimes are released again and again in places like New York (Home of The New York Times) to continue their depredations against the law-abiding. People in New York may not be able to own guns, due to onerous laws and regulations, but residents of other, redder states are more fortunate. How about instead of advocating for gun control, these twits advocate for criminal control and psychopath control?
Ultimately, the Second Amendment protects all our other rights. Indeed the Constitution itself.
Seatbelts, which are at worst a minor inconvenience with great upside, "enjoy" a 90-percent compliance rate. That's 33 million Americans who don't go along with and easy tweak.
"Abandoning" guns is not easy, and it is not a "tweak", but is instead a fundamental issue of not only personal and family safety, but freedom itself. In 30 years, violent crimes against women -- mostly sexual assaults -- declined by 50 to 70 percent once concealed carry became widely possible.
Gun grabbers are rape and robbery facilitators. They should be dea;lt with accordingly.
Are they willing to explain exactly WHY they don't want me owning a gun? No? Well fuck right off, then.
Are they willing to explain HOW Salvador Ramos got the $3-5,000 to purchase the two guns? He worked part time at Wendy's. No, not willing to explain? Well fuck right off then.
Are they willing to explain WHO taught Ramos how to use the guns? You don't learn that from YouTube video. (Right Howard?) No? Well fuck right off then.
Molon labe, baby.
John LGKTQ Henry
Meanwhile, almost 40 million NICS background checks in both 2020 and 2021. That probably means 50 million guns sold each year, since you can buy multiple guns with one NICS background check, and in maybe a dozen states, like MT here, CCW permit holders are exempt, because they get their FBI background check when acquiring or renewing their permits. Maybe 100 million new guns in this country. Thank you AntiFA, BLM, and the Dem party in general.
Just for reference, total homicides 2019 by weapon
Total 13,927
Handguns 6,368
Rifles 364
Shotguns 200
Other guns 45
Firearms, type not stated 3,281
Knives or cutting instruments 1,476
Blunt objects (clubs, hammers, etc.) 397
Personal weapons (hands, fists, feet, etc.)1 600
Poison 16
Explosives 3
Fire 81
Narcotics 93
Drowning 7
Strangulation 64
Asphyxiation 92
Other weapons or weapons not stated 840
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-8.xls
John LGKTQ Henry
And, from the same table, this is interesting:
2015 2016 2017 2018 2019
Total US homicides 13,847 15,355 15,206 14,446 13,927
Up under Obama, down under our Ultra-MAGA leader. Probably just a coinkidink.
John LGKTQ Henry
I have often wondered about the ability of popular media (TV, movies, videogames) to trigger the nutcases out there. How many movies and TV shows depict someone pulling out a fully auto firearm (which are illegal by the way) and spraying death and mayhem about them. What might happen if one were to see the use of more mundane items such as a softball bat, hammer, cane, wrench, scissors, screwdriver, frying pan, etc. used as murder weapons. What about depicting driving motor vehicles into crowds? We have all seen the movie where the car chase goes down a sidewalk with people fleeing left and right, all unharmed. Not very realistic. If someone actually did that, you would have dead bodies everywhere. The miscreant could claim it was a case of unintended acceleration and might even get off scott free.
I have also thought it might be a good idea to prohibit the use of or the depiction of the use of fully auto or semi-auto firearms in movies, TV, or video games. Would the number of mental cases going off the deep end decline? Of course this will never go because it would cripple Hollywood. They would have to return to the days of good stories along with well-crafted plots and dialogue. Something they haven't done in decades.
Godfather 3: Don Lucchesi is impaled with his own eyeglasses.
'What do we do about the people who won't submit to us because they know we hate them?!'
While many gun owners "love" their guns much of the recent buying surge was for self-defense (rioting in the street followed by government inaction) which is not significantly influenced by Hollywood. I believe Hollywood thinks too highly of itself.
John Wick. In the library. With a book.
Yes yes Hollywood glamorizes violence. They LOVE guns! They love to play with their guns. They love dramatic scenes where the character slowly aims and cocks and taunts victims before shooting them with their guns. They are obsessed with lavishing screen time on guns and the violence guns allow.
I never "play" with my guns. Sometimes I do target practice and at least as often I clean them, but I've never pointed mine at anyone. Alec Baldwin loves playing with his cowboy guns! Alec treats his like a harmless toy, even though it is a dangerous GUN. Even now having killed someone he appears to show less remorse than I do when I find a dead bird in the yard. IF Hollywood had the balls to disarm themselves completely onscreen and off, then I would be willing to debate the 2nd Amendment with these assholes.
But they won't and I don't and they can fuck right off with the "new" conversation, which to misquote the Who, is "just like the old conversation." Disarm me? Disarm YOU!
Note to Althouse: the list of alternative weapons I can recall from Movies and TV is too long to remember, but a brief start would be knives, bats, cars, bombs, glass windows, long drops, steam-rollers, suffocation, hanging by rope, hanging by sheet, poison, chunks of steel, chunks of concrete...
Barbara Bel Geddes could swing a mean leg of lanb--and then cook and serve it to the cops. Loved that episode. And I've survived almost 57 years of marriage because my wife buys only boneless legs of lamb.
This is a funtastical idea. Perhaps it will finally bring on the Civil War that the Obesity Army of the Deplorable States of America keeps threatening. I can hear the battle cry: "To the Moon, Alice"
The Alfred Hitchcock Presents "Lamb to the Slaughter" episode can be found here: https://www.schooltube.com/media/1_v65xhi8f
Guns in movies have nothing to do with violence. Heroes and villains handle guns because they're not allowed to fondle their penises.
Or, in the case of Halle Berry in Die Another Day, because she is naturally penis free. So she had to be given a substitute. And then, when she screws on the silencer...
You get the idea.
While I think such things as violent video games (I've never seen one myself as I have lots better things to do than play games on our PC... but then I'm 67) and such movies as John Wick where I can say as a gun guy and martial artist I am impressed with his technique but... the whole show is about an assassin that kills off hundreds of other assassins!
All this does have an influence with a young person. BUT a very very poor childhood, domestic violence, sex assault, lack of any guidance by a father figure (most didn't have one growing up in their lives) etc... are far more likely to have set the stage.
You see this with inner city kids that join gangs... drugs, violence, weapons, zero respect for anyone... and like Chicago, just lots of killings (don't say 'gun violence'... a lot of them are killed by other methods than just guns.)
Then add to that the few people they know don't give a shit what they are doing or saying... most of them tell others at least some of their plans.
And then 'gun free zones'.. like schools.. are not gun free. And as we see demonstrated in Ulvade, the 'lockdown' system is not all that well rehearsed. And those LEOs showing up not all that motivated.
Now about guns themselves... since juvenile records are closed and cannot be accessed to check backgrounds.. and the NCIS system is dependent on 'voluntary' compliance by local governments, states, federal entities, etc... not all the people barred are... barred!!!
Ban guns? Well don't we kind of forget what just happened in the Ukraine? You know the Russian invasion.. the Ukraine having to pass out tens of thousands of AK-47s cause folks over the don't own anything like that? And our own very Southern Border??? The 'invasion' we have going on now with drug runners, murderers, thieves, nuts, etc.. able to walk right across the border?
No, I am not giving you any real solutions.. but just showing you the problem is not .. guns. It is far far more than that.
This idea will fail and the reason it will fail is that leftists assume everyone shares their moral outlook. They see gun ownership as a vice, gun owners see it as a virtue.
The best movie fight scenes don’t use guns. For example, there is the Turkish baths fight scene in Eastern Promises and the kitchen fight scene in Spy.
Hollywood would go broke without guns and violence in films.
But first they can all give up their guns, their private security.
Same with all the politicians.
I will bet every cent I have that pretty-boy Trudeau's security team carries pistols.
Sure, go ahead and open up that can of worms. These clowns have no idea what they are going to instigate. They are sure, absolutely certain that the rest of America is just like them. The " bubble " isn't protection against the push back.
As a cause of unintended death, guns rank just above drowning in a 5 gallon bucket. /sarc
Corkscrew to the neck in Girl On a Train. It had all my favorites: wine, girls, trains.
Corkscrew to the neck in Girl On a Train. It had all my favorites: wine, girls, trains.
Ballpoint pen: Grosse Pointe Blank
@Will: “And every time they push against us, we buy more guns and ammo.”
While I had never particularly wanted one, I recently bought a Core AR-15.
I put a Joe Biden Did This sticker on it.
I just love it when they slip-up and admit they want to disarm us all. Thanks for the reference, Ms. Althouse.
Oddjob's hat: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/may/03/oddjobs-lethal-bowler-hat-from-goldfinger-valued-at-30000
This view is predicated on the assumption that guns are only a threat to public health, like smoking is. But that view is wrong. The CDC's review of defensive gun use puts the number of defensive gun uses at between 550,000 and 2 million annually. That's a lot of people who were not robbed, raped, assaulted, or killed through guns.
Remember, the right to bear arms in the Constitution is different wording of the same right in the UN Declaration of Human Rights: the Right to Self-defense.
Then I'd reckon we'd have to point out the disproportionate gun violence in the black community - day in - day out. Killin babies in the womb and on the porch and on the sofa with their savage drive bys.
Day in - day out. No Respite.
Clive Owen, armed only with a carrot, in a back alley (Shoot 'Em Up, 2007).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NapN0Op3ajY
The elephant in the room is the correlation between mass murderers and absent fathers.
Wham, bam, slash, dash, with relief is the method of choice in diverse and inclusive rites of criminal torts and aborts. Violence of Gun (VOG) is a minority action that is relative and rarely progressive.
That's one sharp pair of scissors!
Gosnell the Planner. Cecile the Cannibal. Here comes the vacuum...
De-platforming, speech policing, social ostracization, censorship and so forth worked on these lefties. They toe the line in their politically correct environments and they believe it makes them good. They seem to think they can do the same thing to our entire culture and us deplorables will change our ways, but they forget we're also irredeemable. All it's gonna do is irritate us.
If the Republicans had any stones and any integrity to would amend the Democrat gun control bill(s)with the nobilities clause stating no one is entitled to armed protection and include all law enforcement agencies at all levels of government and no armed protection for any government official. Let the Dems argue why some of them are special but you aren't.
Hey, how about a blue ribbon for Darrell Brooks, who killed 6 and injured 63 completely innocent folks, young and old, with an SUV at CHRISTMAS! That is qualification for special recognition right there.
There should also be a category for the Soros D.A.s. They kill a lot of people via early release/under charging maniacs.
Under the original intent and meaning of the Second Amendment, which has never been amended, it should be possible for any American citizen to own and operate a fully crewed and armed Ford class aircraft carrier.
What if we changed our laws that made any felony assault or worse = life in prison? What if we enacted zero tolerance for non-defensive violence?
We watch a lot of NCIS. One time someone was murdered by forcing him to drink too much water. Also, NCIS once redid the scissor scene.
"Americans who love their guns" aren't the fucking problem. Psychopaths are. These are the not the same people.
Why is it that Democrats believe that if regular people just heard more one-sided anti-factual lectures from elitist gasbags and celebrities they would simply see the light and realize the thing they enjoy is wrong? These idiots like Pamela Paul need to get out of our their Ivy-cloistered bubbles once in awhile.
Gahrie said...
Under the original intent and meaning of the Second Amendment, which has never been amended, it should be possible for any American citizen to own and operate a fully crewed and armed Ford class aircraft carrier.
********************
Yeah, Gahrie, there's lots of legal precedent for your position.
People have a right, and have always had it under the 2nd, to "keep and bear" their own army and navy.
Totes reasonable.
SNORT
Tom said...
What if we changed our laws that made any felony assault or worse = life in prison? What if we enacted zero tolerance for non-defensive violence?
************
How many thousands of new prisons do we think we would need for all those lifers?
The outside stairs to Uncle Charlie's room. For Charlie.
Bonkti said...
The elephant in the room is the correlation between mass murderers and absent fathers.
*********
Agreed.
The missing elephant in the room is fact that no NRA member has ever committed a mass murder.
---the phone is ringing for Grace Kelly
Is it ever. Tres profound!!
Grace Kelly. Cary Grant. The Riviera. Even the fireworks.
Robie the Cat.
Of the two essays about guns etc at the NYT this morning, I preferred Ross Douthat's to this one (which I only read via Althouse's post). As someone wrote earlier, the Pamela Pauls of the world see gun ownership and their use as a vice; pft.
So I would like to see experiments with age-based impediments rather than full restrictions — allowing would-be gun purchasers 25 and under the same rights of ownership as 40- or 60-year-olds, but with more substantial screenings before a purchase. Not just a criminal-background check, in other words, but some kind of basic social or psychological screening, combining a mental-health check, a social-media audit and testimonials from two competent adults — all subject to the same appeals process as a well-designed red-flag law.
I watched both scenes posted. The fanny belt scene was entertaining and moved so fast that you didn't question its plausibility, but it's not a scene to ponder. Jump cuts are the most dangerous weapon known to film editors ....The Grace Kelly scene was also entertaining. I believed in the diaphanous nightgown, but I think even a trained surgeon would have difficulty in inflicting a moral wound under such circumstances and with such an instrument.....Guns are the most credible instrument of cinematic death. You don't special effects or breakaway furniture. Point and shoot. Even a low budget film like the Alec Baldwin one was able to film an utterly realistic murder scene without resort to jump cuts or the distraction of diaphanous gowns.
The real question is this: will it save more black lives?
The real answer is: no.
Because most gun murders are black on black, followed closely by Hispanic on black and black on Hispanic. And then black on white.
Not adjusted for population percentages.
So, which do you want more of?
gilbar said...
So Serious Question
Will this Ad Campaign target NORDICS too? Or is it just white people we'll be aiming at?
Um, gilbar, I apologize if I awaken you from your woke, but Nordic people, with a few indigenous exceptions, are white folks. Perhaps you mean BIPOCs?
chuck said...
I'd be happy if the Democrats stopped promoting violence, and revolution. They have been doing that for the last twenty years or so.
There it is! Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks, was a Democrat! I knew there was a reason why he has been kept safe at Guantanamo.
"I put a Joe Biden Did This sticker on it."
LOL. I'm gonna get that engraved on a set of custom grips for my 9mm. I'll refer to it when I go to blow out a lung...
@Gahrie - "Under the original intent and meaning of the Second Amendment, which has never been amended, it should be possible for any American citizen to own and operate a fully crewed and armed Ford class aircraft carrier."
That'd be ... interesting. Especially how you'd pay for the upkeep. (As any boat owner knows, they're floating money pits. And an aircraft carrier is a VERY big one that needs a whole lotta money thrown at it regularly...)
But I agree. If you can keep it up to a reasonable standard. And with the Russians, we've seen what happens if you don't. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_aircraft_carrier_Admiral_Kuznetsov
The body: Fists, feet, heads (too numerous to mention)
Blunt objects: Baseball Bats (for entusiasms), hammers, clubs, hydronic presses (for terminators)
Machinery: wood chippers (for bodies in ND), chain saws (for massacres), table saws
Building Materials: Concrete (for sleeping with the fishes), 55g drums (real life mob), tires filled with gasoline (real life cartel)
Bow and arrow (for Sicilians attacking hill billies)
Laser cutters (for HMSS agents)
Vin Diesel and his metal cup and can key.
To everyone who wants to mock Gahrie’s constitutional analysis I assembled a complete list of weapons that were illegal to own at the time the Bill of Rights was written:
gadfly said...
"chuck said...
I'd be happy if the Democrats stopped promoting violence, and revolution. They have been doing that for the last twenty years or so.
There it is! Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks, was a Democrat! I knew there was a reason why he has been kept safe at Guantanamo."
Zoooom!! Right over your empty little head.
Those of us who prefer a free society over a regimented one would rather ask, "What should we do with people who love the State?" It's always been a puzzle to me why anyone in his/her right mind would want to be a disarmed serf.
effinayright said...
Gahrie said...
Under the original intent and meaning of the Second Amendment, which has never been amended, it should be possible for any American citizen to own and operate a fully crewed and armed Ford class aircraft carrier.
********************
Yeah, Gahrie, there's lots of legal precedent for your position.
People have a right, and have always had it under the 2nd, to "keep and bear" their own army and navy.
Totes reasonable.
SNORT
Yes, indeed there is. From the national PArk Service on privateers:
Although the documentation is incomplete, about 1,700 Letters of Marque, issued on a per-voyage basis, were granted during the American Revolution. Nearly 800 vessels were commissioned as privateers and are credited with capturing or destroying about 600 British ships.
Vessels of every size and description were pressed into service as privateers. At the upper end of the scale was the 600-ton, 26-gun ship Caesar of Boston. At the other end was the 8-ton boat Defense of Falmouth, Massachusetts. Crews ranged from a few men in a whaleboat to more than 200 aboard a large, fully equipped privateer. Two-masted schooners and brigantines were most often used in privateering, reflecting the kind of vessels available to American seamen.
The upper end would be roughly equivalent of a British Navy 5th rate ship of the line at the time.
Yeah, Gahrie, there's lots of legal precedent for your position.
People have a right, and have always had it under the 2nd, to "keep and bear" their own army and navy.
Totes reasonable.
U.S. Constitution; Article II Section 8: "The Congress shall have Power ...
To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water"
Letters of Marque and Reprisal are given by the government to private citizens to allow them to wage war on enemy shipping using privately owned, crewed and equipped warships. The Founders granted this power to Congress on the assumption that there would be privately owned warships to use them. Congress has in fact granted such Letters in the past, and can do so again, anytime they want.
Not only is there legal precedent, there are historical examples.
People have a right, and have always had it under the 2nd, to "keep and bear" their own army and navy.
The American Revolution started with the march on Lexington and Concord. This was an attempt to seize privately owned cannons and ammunition.
During the Spanish-American war, the Rough Riders were armed with privately owned weapons, and were better armed than regular US Army units, including Gatling guns.
Riddick, imprisoned in a hellish planetary jail, kills a fellow prisoner with his teacup. And then threatens to use a Spam can key on the next two.
I would think that a room with 15 teenagers throwing rocks stored in buckets could do some damage. (File under: self-defense.)
gadfly said...
chuck said...
I'd be happy if the Democrats stopped promoting violence, and revolution. They have been doing that for the last twenty years or so.
There it is! Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks, was a Democrat! I knew there was a reason why he has been kept safe at Guantanamo.
6/1/22, 10:37 PM
Khalid is being treated a HELL of a lot better than the American citizens rotting away in the DC gulag for trespassing.
“I'd be happy if the Democrats stopped promoting violence, and revolution. They have been doing that for the last twenty years or so”
What must be kept in mind is that much of the gun purchasing, esp the maybe 50 million (at least 40 million based on NICS background checks) guns purchased in both 2020 and 2021 were in direct response to this promotion of violence by Democrats. We are talking their support of AntiFA and BLM, while at the same time trying to Defund The Police, while prosecuting them for using the force necessary to maintain order. We aren’t talking the normal gun lovers in rural America, who are already armed up fairly well, but people like Ann who looked at buying guns for maybe the first time in their lives, thanks to the intentional breakdown of law and order on the part of Democrats in power. Those of us who were already gun owners just moaned about the cost and unavailability of ammunition.
My theory is that the Dem leadership are trying to intimidate their base constituency to support them, through the threat of violence. And the out, the alternative to this, that esp urban dwellers, but also suburbanites, see is to arm up, to protect themselves and their families, when their police won’t, or aren’t allowed to protect them. The Dem leadership’s response is to try to keep guns out of their hands, in order to keep them subjugated. They need their core constituencies to stay afraid, very afraid, in order to impose their power grabbing initiatives. Gun ownership is a safety valve that Dem politicians don’t want their core constituencies to have.
where Biden got it from bullet can blow lung out
How many thousands of new prisons do we think we would need for all those lifers?
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can they be used in flyover to harvest veggies for the coasties?
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