An armed society is a polite society?

Another couple of responsible gun owners killed.
I suppose we should be grateful it happened at home and not at one the kids soccer games to which Mom regularly brought a sidearm.
How long before the firearms fetishist choir declares "she'd still be alive if she'd spent more time on the range practicing her quick draw" or "if the kids had been packing too, they could have stopped Dad!"

crossposted from the Woodshed

Pop Quiz!

Imagine you work as a subcontractor for a bank. The bank wants photos of a bunch of properties on which it holds mortgages to confirm the properties are being kept up and to check the condition of properties on which the mortgage is in default, so off you go in your car with your trusty camera and start snapping away. One homeowner sees you parked in front of his house taking pictures and gets a bit testy. He marches out to the car and wants to know who you are and what the hell you think you're doing taking pictures of his house. Maybe he even gets a bit irate and slaps his hand down on hood of your car. This is not your first day on the job and probably not your first irate homeowner. What do you do?

1. Laugh at him and drive away.
2. Show him your business card, tell him the bank sent you out to take photos of his house and tell him you'll be happy to wait while he calls your office to confirm your story.
3. Stick your .357 magnum in his face before he scratches the paint on your Ford Escort.

Answer key
1. You are an asshole.
2. You are a professional.
3. You are a Republican


h/t to JJ at Unrepentant Old Hippie
crossposted from the Woodshed

The Guns of August

First this dingbat, now the floodgates are open.

One can only assume that since we are told Obama gets dozens of death threats daily, that this latest effort on the part of the wingnuts to intimidate their political opponenets by bringing assault rifles to demonstrations at appearances by the president is probably causing the Secret Service to have kittens the size of Bengal tigers.

Can you imagine for one second the reaction if someone had showed up with an AR-15 at an anti-George Bush rally? You know, the ones the White House insisted be held in fenced-in "Free Speech Zones" surrounded by riot cops miles away from where the president was appearing. People who protested the GOP convention in 2004 in NYC were charged with carrying concealed weapon for having nail scissors in their purse and held for days in makeshift jails in old warehouses contaminated with hazardous chemicals and these whackjobs are being allowed to walk around with assault rifles?

But we on the left are the angry, uncivil ones because we sometimes say "fuck" on our blogs and we questioned the intelligence and motivation of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

Imagine the reaction of the teabaggers and town brawl activists and other Glenn Beck fans if a dozen shotgun-toting neo-Black Panthers came and stood outside the president's next town hall meeting to show support for Obama. The screeching would be deafening.

If these tactics on the right continue, that, sadly, will be the next step in the escalation.

Members of the GOP are encouraging this kind of armed intimidation.

It is only a matter of time before someone starts shooting.

Osama bin Laden must be dying of laughter right now.

h/t to Lulu over at Canadian Cynic.

Crosspost from the Woodshed, where we ask that you check your shooting irons at the door, pardner.

He's not sayin', he's just...you know...sayin'

Sure, he's a block away from where the president is speaking, and he's carrying a sign suggesting the need for violent revolution/assasination and bloodshed while packing heat, but it isn't a threat. He's just a patriotic American exercising his legal second amendment rights.

Remember when George Bush was president and pacifist peaceniks were getting jailed for wearing the wrong T-shirt to town hall meetings and protestors were kept penned up in "Free Speech Zones? I never thought that would seem like the good old days. If this guy can get through a 30 second TV interview, he's going to be the new poster child of the gun-toting angry right. Imagine Joe the Plumber with a 9 mm instead of a monkey wrench.

Update (or should I say reload?)

Yup, a gun nut for certain. Chris Mathews, as usual, acts like a dick, rattling on and making the whole process about his questions rather than the guest's answers, but the answers are there. This nimrod thinks people should pack heat at all times. Yeah, that's a good idea, look how well it's worked out elsewhere in the world, like say, Ethiopia or Afghanistan. And notice he has nothing to say about health care. He says he knows history when it comes to assassinated presidents and yet still brought a gun to a public meeting, supposedly to make a point about standing up for people's rights. Funny how no one ever thought to bring a gun to public meeting during the eight years that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were shredding the Constitution.

Until someone finds out that this guy has a criminal record of shooting people or molesting goats or some such crap, I think we can count on seeing him on FOX at least once a week as their new "Second Amendment expert" or some such nonsense.

(crossposted from the Woodshed)

A blacker Friday than most

Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with people?
On the bright side, I suppose a few people saved a dollar and a half on singing statues of Santa Claus and 5-pound bags of holiday M&Ms. People actually complained that the Walmart store was closing temporarily (just for a few hours) because one of the staff was trampled to death.
At least that death was accidental, out in California, they are having shootouts in the Toys R Us.
You are all getting coal this year.

crossposted from the Woodshed

Fatal stupidity

Not that we needed further confirmation, but I think this story shows that gun nuts really are mentally deficient. The United States should slap a tax on ammunition to fund a study to see whether the smoke from cordite and gunpowder kills brain cells or alters brain chemistry that deals with cognitive functions.

"This accident was truly a mystery to me," said Bizilj, director of emergency medicine at Johnson Memorial Hospital in Stafford, Conn. "This is a horrible event, a horrible travesty, and I really don't know why it happened."

That comment, for those too lazy to click the link, comes from father of an eight-year-old boy who died on the weekend at a gun show after he lost control of a fully automatic Uzi submachinegun he was firing under the supervision of an instructor--and shot himself in the head. All while his father was reaching for his camera to record the little tyke's redneck right of passage.

Yes, you read that right. An eight-year-old firing a submachinegun. And his father who was there taking pictures and cheering the boy on doesn't understand how it could happen that his child could possibly have been hurt, let alone killed.

Would someone please go dig up Charleton Heston so I can kick him in the nuts?

I need a number of drinks.

Crossposted from the Woodshed