Quote of the day—J. Michael Winmore

Come July 1, any person with a “troubled” mind, or just your garden variety fool, can openly carry a gun, without training, without permit, without background checks. It’s the brainchild of the most comical state legislature in the nation. (see story from KC Starfrom back in April of 2015)

It’s the type of tired, faux tough guy, cock waving that socially conservative Libertarians and Republicans always tout as being a protection of “Americans’ freedoms.” Meanwhile, it puts more Americans at the risk of a gun-smoked catastrophe.

J. Michael Winmore
June 30, 2015
Kansas Gun Laws: Wyatt Earp Would Be Appalled
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday! Via email from Bob S.

We have the Bill of Rights, SCOTUS rulings, and decades of data from all over the country. He has grade school insults.—Joe]

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20 thoughts on “Quote of the day—J. Michael Winmore

  1. I just left this, where it’s awaiting moderation:

    Alrighty then. It’s now the 6th of July in Wichita, KS. Where’s the blood? I just knew I was going to have to jump over all the red, sticky puddles at the grocery. It was a certainty that we’d have the fire department hosing down the streets so cars wouldn’t be throwing sprays of O-positive all over the windshields of cars behind them. It was an absolute given that edging somebody out with your shopping cart was going to end in a massive fusillade of bullets.

    Wait, what? That hasn’t happened? It hasn’t happened in other Constituional carry states? It hasn’t become a way of life in all of the states that have some form of licensed concealed carry? Oh my god, what went wrong? How could the hoi polloi have disappointed you so horribly? How could they have not lived down to your childish, whinging, cynical cesspool of low expectations? How could they have failed so utterly to have proven you smarter and wiser than they?

    Maybe it’s because they live in the real world. You should try it sometime.

  2. If the gun is a penis, then the penis is a weapon. What are the implications of there being many who see the penis as a weapon? What are they telling us about themselves?

  3. There is always this claim that blood will run free in the streets if the monopoly on force by Cops and Robbers is eliminated and ordinary citizens may carry legally, but it never pans out that way. Could it be that the presence of unscrupulous lawyers willing to sue anyone for anything have caused the people who carry concealed to then travel around as shyly as a rattlesnake?
    For those who miss the metaphor, either innocently or on purpose, the rattlesnake does not go looking for trouble, it warns before it strikes, and sometimes will not even inject venom, because it knows it will have a very hungry month ahead. Virtually every concealed carry permit holder, far from becoming a big man with a gun, realizes the power he holds can destroy lives, including his own, and the family he supports, so he wants no one to know he carries, and seeks to avoid trouble if at all possible.

  4. J Michaell Winmore, eh? I say, we are full of ourselves, aren’t we?

    • From his blog:
      “J. Michael Winmore is a Kansas fiction writer and commentator, active since 2011.Dealing primarily in the realm of absurdist and pshychosocial existentialist humor, Winmore’s writings pack an entertaining dose of thought provoking resonance. He attended the University of Kansas where he was an opinion columnist, sports, and fiction writer before graduating in 2008 with a degree in English Creative Writing.”

      Translation:
      Recent University grad with an absolutely useless degree in the real world, with a student loan approximately the size of the budget of Kansas who, while writing books that nobody has heard of, “works” as a freelance commenter hoping he’ll one day make more money than the barista down the street.

      • Have some mercy. I am hugely fortunate that we had no internet when I was fresh out of college. If I had been able to put my thoughts out on a blog and on Facebook, holy cow, I’d never be able to live it down. I was far worse that this Winmore guy.

        • Mercy?
          Me?
          Ming was a dilettante in comparison.
          My (unofficially leaked to me) psyche profile showed I was ‘deficient’ in that aspect of personality.
          However, I am trying to improve, even if it’s merely an aspect of good manners.

  5. Greetings everyone!

    Just wanted to tap in here. I wrote the blog from which the above quote was pulled. On Monday I emailed Joe to thank him for linking my piece to his own site, because I think an open dialogue on wide varying viewpoints – such as the matter of guns – is a good thing.

    One of the last things Joe said to me in our email exchange is that the gun debate was over and that “my side” lost. That, I feel, is absolutely true. However, it doesn’t change my right to disagree with or verbalize my frustrations.

    I usually, perhaps wisely, steer away from politicized topics on my site for the fact that it usually results in personal attacks. It was a post written in an emotional and over the top tone with which I do, post print, regret using.

    To change the narrative I’m seeing that is being incorrectly inferred by what little is known about me in an attempt to take personal shots, I was a non-traditional student who didn’t start attending college until the age of 23. I was married with two kids and I worked in construction before and during my entire schooling experience to support my family of four and finish with not a cent of debt and a degree with honors. I have done extremely well post graduation.

    I am also the son of a former U.S. Army Ranger. I grew up around guns not just at home but at my grandfather’s in Texas as well. I made the choice not to own guns as an adult not as a rejection of my experience with them, but a simple choice in life that I don’t regret.

    I’ve had a gun in my face on two occasions, one in the hand of a very mentally unstable person. I’ve also had a gun save my life once. So I’ve seen the dangers and protective values of a gun from both angles.

    My frustration is not with responsible gun owners as my own father is and grandfather was, and most of you I’m sure are as well. I do, however, have a big problem with legislation that removes all restrictions, background checks and permitting clearing the path for anyone, no matter how unstable, possibly even a prior felon, to get their hands on a gun without questions and at a fairly low cost.
    As someone who, in my non-writing 9-5 job, deals directly with a lot of un-medicated mentally ill individuals, I worry that they could hurt themselves or someone else.

    That is my stance. I don’t expect anyone to agree with it. I just felt compelled to vent my frustrations. If you want to attack the thesis of this particular article, I understand, and knew upon writing it, that this would be the case for many who read it.

    I also apologize for the length of this comment. I just wanted to clarify some things and let you know that I am not a simply a name but a person. I extend my respect to all of your views on the matter, and only ask that we refrain from the personal attacks.

    Have a great week everyone.

    • Thank you for stopping by and contributing.

      To bring other people up to speed, what I said in email to Winmore about the anti-gun side losing was primarily to provide the link to this blog post.

    • Surely you realize that felons have no problem getting guns now? That, because they are criminals, they don’t obey laws, so NO law will ever prevent them from going about armed?
      So what is your REAL objection to the 99.99+% of us who are law abiding being armed?
      After all federal crime statistics prove that only a very small fraction of a percentage of people who legally carry guns for protection ever commit a crime of any kind, let alone a gun crime.
      After all, the same crime statistics prove that we are at least 2-3 times less likely to commit a violent crime than police officers.
      After all, despite the fact that, in self defense, or the defense of other innocents, we (justifiably) kill 3-5 times more violent criminals each year than the police, you are 5-6 times more likely to be accidentally killed or maimed by the police than by us.
      After all, the best estimates indicate we use guns to stop or prevent violent crimes against us or others somewhere in the neighborhood of 2.5-3 MILLION times per year (and in the vast majority of those incidents, no shots are fired because the mere presence of the ability to use effective force causes the criminal to flee).
      So, I repeat, what is your REAL objection to our exercising the basic human right to be armed for self defense?

    • Well, I believe in reciprocity.

      When you grow up and stop being so interested in male genitalia, (you saying you’re married with kids and all), and stop throwing juvenile bathroom insults in our general direction, we might be interested in adult conversation. Otherwise……..

    • You are a writer, yet you failed to do even the most basic of research about the states where permitless concealed carry has been the norm for over a decade (Alaska/Arizona), or those which have had it a shorter time, or Vermont, which has had it since a state Supreme Court ruling for over a century.

      If you had, you would have seen it has proven absolutely innocuous in practice, despite the same exact “what ifs” and “concerns” expressed by people much like you in those states. Hell, unlicensed open carry has been in place in some states since their creation, with no moves toward restriction (California being the exception that proves the rule).

      In short, you made assumptions and publicly pontificated about a subject about which you failed to first educate yourself. That shows a disturbing lack of intellectual integrity, unbecoming of an educated person.

  6. Anyone who uses the phrase “socially conservative Libertarian” is so ignorant that it’s clearly not worth reading any further. And that’s just the first of many factual blunders.
    Sorry Mr. Winmore. If you start doing more than 30 seconds of research before you begin spouting, maybe people would pay some attention to what you say. But since you can’t be bothered, we won’t bother either.

  7. Something does not compute here.

    J. Michael Winmore, you describe yourself as the son of a U.S Army Ranger and the grandson of a Texan, both gun owners and users, to whom you refer with respect, at least when talking to us. But on your own blog, you tar gun owners in general as “tired, faux tough guy, cock waving”.

    I’ll take a wild guess and assume that you don’t refer to your father and grandfather that way. Care to comment?

    • And if so, who ARE you referring to, and why?
      On the evidence shown so far, “crap for brains” appears to be the proper judgment.

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