In the movie Miss Congeniality, the finalists in the beauty pageant are being asked the generic questions. Miss Rhode Island is asked, “Please describe your idea of a perfect date.”
She replies, “April 25th. Because it’s not too hot, not too cold; all you need is a light jacket.”
So what do you say we settle on that date as the perfect time to talk about gun control? People will have forgotten all about what happened in Las Vegas last weekend. And even though we probably will have had three or four more mass shootings between now and then, it will give Washington politicians a chance to play to their respective bases before they take the summer and fall off to run for re-election.
Look, I’m a realist…Boogie, woogie, woogie. I realize that nothing substantial will ever get done. It doesn’t matter that 93 percent of Republicans(!) support expanded background checks. Most of the members of Congress have their scrotums and/or corresponding lady parts in a monetary vise with the National Rifle Association ready to turn the screws at the slightest hint of non-conformity.
I used to be a cockeyed optimist on this subject. I honestly thought that America would grow up someday and lose (or at least temper) its fetish for violence. I also thought that, eventually, we would get people in Congress who took their jobs and their oaths seriously. But we’re heading in the other direction. It actually took me a long time to lose hope, but after some guy used a gun—the sole purpose of which was kill lots of human beings in a short period of time—to wipe out a classroom of first graders right before Christmas and Congress did dick, I knew then.
But maybe on April 25, somebody can stand up in Congress and ask the question, “Why do we allow the manufacture and sale of weapons that are only designed to kill lots of people? They’re not good for hunting. They’re not good for self-defense (unless you’ve tripped and fallen into a bad Steven Seagal movie—if you’ll pardon the redundancy).”
Those guns aren’t going to be banned, but maybe we can force gun stores to engage in Truth in Advertising. As in, “Hey, on sale we have the Massacre Special. Able to hold way more rounds than any rational human being would ever want or need. And, when using military-grade ammo, able to shoot the limbs off a fleeing concertgoer from the height of a 32nd-story window.”
Sales would probably go up.
Can you imagine the guy who invented that artifact of evil when he dies and arrives at the Pearly Gates?
St. Peter: Tell me a little about yourself.
Bump Stock Inventing Piece of Crap: Well, I had a wife and kids. Drove a Lexus. Went to church on Sunday…unless the Cowboys were playing. Always bought Girl Scout cookies, and not just the Thin Mints.
St. Peter: What did you do for a living?
B.S.I.P.C.: I invented the Bump Stock.
St. Peter: Take your ass on down the road. And you’d better have sunscreen SPF 8,000,000. When you get there, say hi to Saddam Hussein, Wayne LaPierre, and Kellyanne Conway for me.
B.S.I.P.C.: Why is Kellyanne Conway there?
St. Peter: Well, all she ever did was lie, which is mostly just a venial sin, but she did it so much, she broke our counter, and it’s a nightmare trying to get parts for that thing.
Over the past few years, thanks to my old, dearly departed friend Emil Franzi, I got to meet a lot of good, decent people who happened to own guns. It helped me to mature and kept me from casually slipping into stereotypes when any gun-related topic would come up. I’ll try to keep that (and him) in mind as the debate boils onward, but it’s not going to prevent me from calling B.S. when people revert to throwing out dumb-ass (and patently false) clichés as part of a pro-gun argument.
I’ve said lots of stupid things in my life. I once said (something to the effect of), “We got the Civil Rights Bill and the Voting Rights Act. Racism should all but disappear within a generation or two.”
I also once said, “Wow, the Wildcats won the Pac-12 South. RichRod’s program should be upper-echelon from now on.”
But I have never said anything as stupid as, “More gun laws won’t save lives.”
Well yeah, they would. I can think of any number of low-key, common-sense laws that would have cut the Las Vegas death toll by 80 or 90 percent. No law would have prevented that guy from shooting out of the hotel window, but he shouldn’t have been able to kill or maim 600 people. That’s just not right.
During the 24-hour news onslaught that followed the shooting, I did come across two stats that are both oddly uplifting. Only about three American households in 10 actually have guns in them. That’s down from over 50 percent in the 1970s and represents a profound societal shift. Then there’s the fact that half of all guns are owned by just 3 percent of the households. People who are that hot for guns can’t possibly find someone with whom to reproduce, so that may signal a coming generational shift.
Only 195 days until April 25.
This article appears in Oct 12-18, 2017.
Let’s stipulate, as attorney’s do, that we have the means and the laws to end all newsworthy gun massacres tomorrow. No more do we sit entranced as the shootings play out, the killer dead or taken into custody, motives examined, blame assessed, photo spreads of the victims and tales of heroism and lives cut short published, police chiefs daily press conferences and, of course, the thoughts and prayers of officials extended to families of the victims. Great, problem solved.
Unless you are concerned about the other 99% of gun related deaths that go virtually unreported every day of every year. If it bleeds, they say, it leads. But the blood has to be in rivers, not trickles. Danehy jumps belatedly on the bandwagon adding nothing new to the discussion. “Well yeah, they (more gun laws) would. I can think of any number of low-key, common-sense laws that would have cut the Las Vegas death toll by 80 or 90 percent.” Great Tom, but how about looking at the forest instead of that one Redwood? One neighborhood in Chicago (Austin) has had more shooting deaths year to date (69) than the toll in Las Vegas. Chew that over. One neighborhood in one US city.
My point should be clear. Mass murders and media circuses aside, we have a problem that will not be resolved in any of our lifetimes. There are roughly the same number of guns in this country as there are people living within its borders. The genie is out of the bottle. No legislation is going to put it back in.
A warning to anyone who wants to present an opposing view to Tommy. ( That’s right, I said Tommy) Don’t bother. It will fall on deaf ears and you’ll be called an idiot by Peabrain and the rest of Tommy’s Legion of Liberal losers. You’ll even be insulted in Spanish by Peabrain’s “friend” Miss Francis. Save your breath.
“According to crime statistics from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), knives are consistently used to kill people far more often than rifles are used. And the numbers arent even close: five times as many murders were committed with knives than were committed with rifles last year.”
http://thefederalist.com/2014/11/11/knives-kill-more-people-each-year-than-rifles-time-for-knife-control/
Typical liberal type solution. Punish everybody for the few. Why not knives? How thoughtless.
CW13 finally says something that makes sense. Now if he’ll just listen to his own advice.
Just more uniformed anti-gun zealotry along the lines of Hillary Clintons statements about the mythical silencer.
They’re not good for hunting. Patently false. Semi-automatic weapons can and do make great hunting rifles unless you would like to explain why they dont.
And, when using military-grade ammo, able to shoot the limbs off a fleeing concertgoer. That is about as ignorant a statement as you can get. Military ammunition is designed to cause the least amount of damage to a body as possible. The Hague Convention of 1899 prohibits the use of projectiles that will increase injuries and suffering of combatants. As a result, military projectiles have full metal jackets. They resist fragmentation/deformation, do not transfer all of the energy from the projectile to the target, and often pass completely though a body only leaving a wound channel. They do not blow arms and legs off of bodies. It does the serve the purpose of misinforming people and scaring them about firearms.
As per Wayne Olsons post on knives:
Here is the direct link to the FBIs Uniform Crime Report on homicides in the U.S..
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2015/…
Murders by rifles and shotguns 521
Murders by knives or cutting instruments 1,544
Murders by clubs and hammers 421
Murders by hands, fists, feet 624
Average annual deaths by drowning in a swimming pool – 677 (Children under the age of 15 account for 335)
Total Murders by firearms 9,616
Deaths caused by Drunk Drivers 10,265
These statistics beg the question of why aren’t those people, who are all wee-weed up about the Las Vegas shooter, trying to get knives, hammers and clubs, swimming pools, and alcohol banned?
tctw. Great points, but like I said they fall on deaf ears. You think Tommy will look into what you said and admit he’s wrong? It might snow in July, too. These fools can’t argue with you. They just hit dislike and hide behind Mommy’s skirt, hoping the bad men with guns will go away.
See what I mean? They make our points for us.
The interesting thing is that the bump stock made his aim erratic, he would have been able to kill a lot more people with far more precision had he not used the bump stock, and used actual hunting ammunition rather than military full metal jacket ammo. We should be thankful that those poor decisions in his planning reduced the number of casualties. Keep in mind that he shot over 500 people and the vast majority of them survived their injuries, thank God!
Even the military, who issues fully automatic weapons to our soldiers, recommends that fully automatic fire not be used except in certain circumstances…
Bump stocks are crap, I have no desire to own one, but people have the right to own one if they wish and can use it responsibly.
It is awful, but we are better off with United States citizens being able to keep and bear arms, than we would be under a tyranny. Think of how many hundreds of millions of people have died over the past century because they lived in countries which did not recognize the right to keep and bear arms, communism alone has killed over 100 million people.