Category Archives: Crap For Brains

People and especially governments do some incredibly stupid stuff. This is about those stupid actions.

Quote of the day—Mark Ridley Thomas

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Let’s stop mincing words; Let progressives — not all but certainly many — stop feigning tolerance for a gun culture we abhor and rampant gun ownership we cannot comprehend.

Mark Ridley Thomas
January 17, 2013
Supervisor for the Second District in Los Angeles County
The National Rifle Association Is Correct: I Do Want Your Guns
[First off, his admission should be used as evidence at his trial.

Second, if he has that tough of a problem with comprehension why isn’t he in an institution of some sort instead of public office?

Third, H/T to Say Uncle.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Bob Owens

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Governor “Common Sense” Cuomo is a stumbling, bumbling example of the kind of person emotionally unsuited for high office, a fact the flaws in the draconian SAFE Act will show over time as unintended consequences catch up to bad legislation.

Bob Owens
January 17, 2013
Oops. Were there not LEO magazine exemptions in the rushed NY SAFE Act?
[H/T to Chris Knox who retweeted thegunwire.

The only thing I can add is that anyone who advocates for gun control is emotional, logically, and philosophically unsuited for any public job above toilet scrubber.—Joe]

The stupid—it burns!

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H/T to Jon H. from the gun email list at work.

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. After all he is a politician and he is from Chicago:

A South Side alderman is asking for City Council hearings on an unorthodox gun control measure that would allow for GPS tracking of firearms.

WBBM Newsradio Political Editor Craig Dellimore reports Ald. Willie Cochran (20th), a former police officer, has suggested that global positioning system chips be embedded in new guns, and retrofitted on existing firearms, so they could be located if they go missing.

“Just like if your car gets stolen, OnStar can tell you where your car is. If your gun gets stolen, and you report it, we should be able to find that gun,” he said.

Your car has a battery that weighs 40 pounds and is recharged every time you use the car.

You cellphone is a better analogy but doesn’t make his case any better. A cellphone has a standby time of, at most, a few days and requires a service provider such as AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, or Verizon in order to report it’s position.

That doesn’t even take into account that a criminal who steals one with a GPS will remove the battery or destroy the electronics.

One of the better comments I read on the site:

The difference between stupidity and genius: Genius has it’s limits, stupidity doesn’t, case proven by Willie Cochran.

Stupidity this strong should cause him to burst into flames hot enough to melt tungsten. The reporters that didn’t call him out on the stupid should smolder.

“Review” has a specific meaning

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I think I’ve read several hundred product “reviews” that go along the lines of;
“It looks and feels great. I can’t wait to go out and shoot it.”

I’m sorry, but “wow-I-can’t-wait-to-get-out-and-try-it” is not a review. Please don’t do that. Sometimes I can read through dozens of “reviews” before I find a single review. I fully understand your excitement and pleasure upon receiving a new product, but that’s a reaction, not a review. Please don’t waste people’s time.

Words mean things

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I suppose that the word “clip” being used to refer to a magazine must have started in earnest during the period in which the M1 Garand rifle was common issue. “Toss me another clee-up, Cletus” would have been used to apply to either a 1911 magazine or a Garand clip (or Tommy gun, M3, et al, magazine) among comrades, maybe. I still talk with the occasional W.W. II or Korean War vet who says “clip” all the time (and if they’re from Alabama it is “clee-up”, with the extra syllable, as in “She-it” or the number Foe-er”)

And so we’ve been harping on it for a while now. Some media types are starting get a whiff of a clue, but just to be safe, they’re using both terms, talking about “magazine clips” which, technically, would be devices that hold two or more magazines together. I’ve seen those for sale. Not that your average media pundit would ever understand.

Anyway; just off the top of my head, I don’t recall ever seeing an ammunition clip than hold more than ten rounds (unless you count a belt). You?

I suppose some of this misuse is intentional, just to irritate people. When you read the actuall laws, they tend to use the term magazine when they mean magazine.

Why there is no cell service in Westlake tunnel

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It has always annoyed me that I don’t have cell service while waiting for the bus at Westlake Station (downtown Seattle). Many times the bus or I will be late and I need to tell someone I’m not going to be on time but I have to wait until the bus arrives and gets me out of the tunnel. Or I could leave the tunnel on my own and risk missing the bus and being even later.

Yes, it’s in a tunnel 80 (?) feet underground but I put in my own microcell in the middle of a field in Idaho something like 30 miles from the nearest cell tower and have good service for myself and my Boomershoot “customers” using AT&T. Why couldn’t the cell companies get service 80 feet?

Now I know the answer:

The reason you don’t have cell coverage in Westlake Station is because the Three Stooges refused to allow the carriers to ride on the radio system without paying substantial fees for the privilege. Verizon, T-Mobil, Sprint, et al gave a collective “Eff You” to the Stooges when they demanded the fees, and now the populace is denied cell coverage.

Governments don’t have customers to make happy. They have subjects.

Quote of the day—john personna

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I will say that if someone suggested a reasonable boundary and a buyback, it would matter to me how generous it is. Paying 150% of 2012 market price would seem pretty fair. It would not even hurt the economy if you printed money to do a lot of that. If money is traded for guns, and guns are destroyed, the wealth remains the same.

john personna
December 28, 2012
Comment to Taxing Ammunition
[He has no clue as to what wealth is.

And more generally he also has no clue as to the fundamentals of economics. As the supply goes down the price goes up. 150% of 2012 market price would be a buyers market when the supply is being forcibly set to zero. The people actually willing to sell their firearms and accessories at 150% of 2012 market price could get 200% or perhaps even 2000% on the black market.

I can only conclude liberalism is a mental disorder. This becomes a dangerous delusion that they are the superior ones and should be in charge.—Joe]

This makes sense to me

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The things politicians say and the laws they write and the regulations that come from them are so irrational and that I frequently say, “It’s just a law. It doesn’t have to make sense.” But given some of the other crazy stuff I have seen by comparison this makes sense to me:

The executive order would also hold bullets and high-capacity magazines accountable as accessories to a crime.

Frank said he was glad that targeting scopes were exempted from criminal responsibility under the new law of the land. “Let’s face it,” Frank said, “targeting scopes are kind of gay. Therefore they must be given special consideration.”

Under the executive order, guns convicted of a crime would be melted down and turned into speculums and other probing devices for use by the TSA at airport inspection checkpoints.

From Stanley via email at work.

Quote of the day—Al-750574

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Semi automatic weapons have no business in a civilian’s possession. Hunters use rifles and bows not assault weapons so I think they would be agreeable. Time for a ban on semi-automatic weapons.

…

Ammunition will be registered and signed for just like sudafed in a drugstore. There will be a one time purchase limit per month unless exception made in advance. For all of you folks saying that won’t work; that it will cause a black market, you are right but we have to try otherwise we will be Gotham City in no time.

Al-750574
December 20, 2012
Comment to Boehner says House could consider Biden gun panel’s proposals
[Spoken like a true unicorn believing lefty. Shorter version, “I know it will be like prohibition with murderous gangs run by people worse than Al Capone. But we should do it anyway.”

Hunters don’t use semi-autos and will be agreeable?

That much stupidity and ignorance should be painful. But then perhaps they are so close to a vegetative state they don’t feel pain anymore.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Brent Budowsky

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Military-style assault weapons should be banned in ways that honor the Second Amendment…

Brent Budowsky
December 19, 2012
The NRA and the USA
[And:

  • Our governments should censor and ban religions in ways that honor the First Amendment.
  • The military should be housed in our private homes in ways that honor the Third Amendment.
  • The police should search and take money from random pedestrians in ways that honor the Fourth Amendment.
  • The police should beat confessions from suspects in ways that honor the Fifth Amendment.
  • Slave owners should treat their slaves in ways that honor the Thirteenth Amendment.

Brent buddy, You need to rethink things. Think about being gang raped in a way that honors your body then get back to me. It just doesn’t work that way.—Joe]

Check your spreadsheet for errors

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J. Wheeler says,

Gun control may not be enough to stop every senseless killing in this country, but a ban on assault weapons is immediate and it’s free…

Wheeler miscalculated.

What about the tens of millions of existing “assault weapons” in private hands? There are only three options that I can see with perhaps some minor variations:

  1. They are grandfathered and will exist for decades and hence any effect is not immediate.
  2. Taxpayers will be required to purchase them from the existing owners. This will cost billions even if the existing owners cooperated. And that is a very big if.
  3. Confiscation without compensation is unconstitutional in more than one way. And the cost… well, just let’s say the costs will be incalculable.

Quote of the day—StillLooking

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The only benefit to society of guns is population control.

StillLooking
November 24, 2012
Comment to Obama should now push for gun control
[Yes. I’m sure over population was of such concern the authors of the Bill of Rights made sure it was appropriately addressed.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Smooth Kobra

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the nation is founded on evil…anyone can see that

Smooth KobraSmooth Kobra
Tweeted on November 29, 2012.
[This pissed me off pretty good.

My response was:

@smoothkobra I’ll take you to the border with all your stuff that fits into my SUV if you NEVER come back. @Gay_Cynic @anothergunblog @TL671

He doesn’t deserve to live in this country and with that attitude he certainly isn’t going to make this country a better place.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Tom Mauser

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People don’t trust government to do what’s right. They are very attracted to the idea of a nation of individuals, so they don’t think about what’s good for the collective.

Tom Mauser
Gun-control activist.
November 2012
The Case for More Guns (And More Gun Control)
[It’s good to have him explicitly say it. Mauser (how ironic!) is opposed to a nation of individuals and individual rights. The collective is what is important.

Mauser is opposed to not just a specific enumerated right called out in the Bill of Rights, but the very foundation of this nation. He should move to a country more closely politically aligned with his views. I’m thinking North Korea would be appropriate. The United States Constitution clearly was designed for people totally different from him.—Joe]

What can we do about gun control?

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“What can we do about gun control?” is an open question on answers.yahoo.com.

Someone with the alias of Sal Paradise says:

Shoot gun owners with their own guns?

I find it difficult to interpret this any other way than this guy is advocating theft and murder of people exercising a specific enumerated right. Typical.

He must be a democrat. They have a very long history of opposition to civil rights:

DemocratsRepublicans

I doubt there would be much difference

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Cheating to “qualify” as a public school teacher.


You could select names randomly from a phone book, hire those people as teachers and administrators without any training and no benefits or retirement program, end up with a very high turnover accordingly, and probably end up with a better school than some of the ones we’re currently forced by law to fund.  Chances are, they wouldn’t all be indoctrinated leftist/authoritarians such as we have now, but then it would depend on the city.  Certainly, some of the teachers I had were far below average in intelligence and functionality.  Plus they hated kids.  The random, first generation immigrant farmer or mill worker from that area would have exceeded their educational abilities, at least for a while until they got bored from not being able to pursue their main interests.  If all they did was nothing, we’d have done better in my high school, as we wouldn’t have had anyone impeding us in the classroom.  We could have read some books, looked into things using the library, brought in people from the community to speak about their specialties, discussed things amongst ourselves, and actually ended up understanding something along the way without getting a bad taste for the “education” process or being treated like pieces of shit for being curious and having independent minds.

Because cowering like rabbits under the desk works so well

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Paul C. Duffy has the strangest thoughts. And then he shares them with a letter to the editor:

I was disheartened beyond words to read about a program that offers would-be victims of school shootings alternatives to the traditional lock-down reaction to such crimes.

…

Canton police Detective Chip Yeaton, who sounds like a caring citizen and father, spoke in support of the proposed school program, called ALICE, which stands for alert, lockdown, inform, counter, evacuate. Yeaton said that “school shootings continue to happen, and young people are dying. We need to change the philosophy.”

Yeaton is right, but his focus is wrong. Our philosophy does indeed need to change: We need to find the real and moral courage to stand down the gun lobbies — the National Rifle Association and other Second Amendment zealots — whose reckless defense of gun rights has led to a society where almost anyone can acquire a Glock 9mm and the ammunition needed to ruin lives and communities in seconds.

What Duffy totally ignores or does not comprehend is that people can acquire a 9mm Glock and the ammunition to defend lives. I realized I’m biased as I have a handgun on my hip as I type this but handguns are designed for and used millions of times each year to defend innocent life. Duffy’s brain is stuck in “prey” mode.

Read Columbine by Dave Cullen. When violent predators attack students at a school cowering under the desk this behavior gives the predator feelings of even greater power and control. They feel justified in killing those who cower beneath them. One of the prime motivators of the Columbine predators was that they believed people were so stupid they didn’t deserve to live. We don’t know what their thoughts were the last couple of hours but it would seem to me their opinions of human intelligence could not have improved as they saw people “hiding” underneath desks and tables and they strolled from person to person and shot them.

I kept wondering if the Boston Globe got the letter writers name wrong. Maybe it was actually “Fluffy” instead of “Duffy”. And the ‘C’ stands for Cottontail.

Duffy advocates being a coward in the face of a single criminal predator but “courage” while advocating people “stand down the gun lobbies”. He should think this through. Suppose he does “stand down the gun lobbies”. Then what? Is he going to start confiscating firearms from people? I would like to point out that Fluffy Duffy should be happy he has the gun lobby. They are what separate him from the 80 million gun owners in this country. Rabbits are no match for hunters.

Update: Sebastian also comments with Oh Noes! Freedom!

Quote of the day—Henry Louis Mencken

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Of all the classes of men, I dislike most those who make their livings by talking—actors, clergymen, politicians, pedagogues, and so on. All of them participate in the shallow false pretenses of the actor who is their archetype. It is almost impossible to imagine a talker who sticks to the facts. Carried away by the sound of his own voice and the applause of the groundlings, he makes inevitably the jump from logic to mere rhetoric.

Henry Louis Mencken
From Minority Report, H. L. Mencken’s Notebooks, Knopf, 1956.
[It would seem to me that the appreciation of the applause is an important item. If the talker causes the listener to think and contemplate it would seem to me that you have an entirely different species than if the talker stirs the emotions with the intent to generate applause.

Still, I understand his point. I get particularly annoyed at actors and politicians that know how to “work a crowd” but know next to nothing about the topic they are pontificating on.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Rachel Elmalawany

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For people like myself who are not satisfied with the justifications for carrying dangerous weapons, it sometimes seems that your viewpoint isn’t important when it’s a right guaranteed by the Constitution. Keep in mind, the Constitution has been changed before and can change again as long as you’re willing to put your efforts in the right place in Washington to get laws changed.

Rachel Elmalawany
November 14, 2012
Columnist: Gun control doesn’t control enough
[Keep in mind, Ms. Elmalawany, the constitution can’t be changed “in Washington”. It takes quite a bit more than that.

Keep in mind, Ms. Elmalawany, the entire Bill of Rights was a qualifier for agreeing to the constitution to begin with. If one of those items are nulled out the agreement to form a union is nulled.

Keep in mind, Ms. Elmalawany, that if you were to successful in repealing the 13th Amendment you would encounter, and rightly so, “stiff resistance” in the implementation. There are probably just as many people that would resist the implementation of a 2nd Amendment repeal as there are that would resist a 13th Amendment repeal implementation.

Keep in mind, Ms. Elmalawany, there are about 220 million people in the U.S. that don’t own guns. There are about 80 million people who do and who consume about 10 billion rounds of ammo each year. That’s what we do for practice. Please don’t attempt to verify our level of resolve or the quality of our practice.—Joe]

I thought I took care of that

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Roberta, Sebastian, and Tam report on the nanny’s in Indiana getting their panties twist over Tannerite.

A few years ago almost exactly the same thing happened. A T.V. station (WSBTV) made a video whining about, as Roberta said, “Scary–Go-BOOM!” They got a politician to talk about how terrible it was and how he was “going to do something” about it.

I sent them an email and within 24 hours the video was taken down and we didn’t hear anything more about it. Not even from the politician.

This is a little different case in that they didn’t use any of my video for their whine piece but the same principles apply. Here is a starting point for your letter to the T.V. station. Modify it a bit and you have one for your legislator:

You recently produced a video about a legal product used by thousands of people every year and found people willing to say it scared them and you. For you to engage in a such a biased and even bigoted attack on a legal product used in a legal manner is exceedingly offensive to me and thousands of other people.

I can’t imagine what you were thinking. Would you show video of people using guns to legally hunt, shoot tin cans, or put holes in paper targets and then contact the opportunist politicians because you were worried someone might use their guns to commit a terrorist act? Or how about showing someone having a glass of wine with dinner or drinking a beer in their backyard? Would you demand the government do something about this because of your concerns about drunk driving?

When I was growing up my family was able to, and did, buy dynamite, blasting caps, at the local hardware store with no special license or transportation requirements. We paid for it, picked it up out back, put in it in the trunk of the car and drove home with it. That the average person can still acquire explosives easily, legally, and safely is a testament to what a great country we have. It shows that not only the government is subservient to its citizens but that its citizens are responsible and can be trusted.

If you had demonstrated these explosives were used in thousands of crimes each year I might think you had reason to be concerned. But you did not do this. You could have used that same product and those same video to show what a great country we have. You could have shown what unique freedoms we have and how those freedoms are not being abused. Seattle King 5 Evening Magazine did that with this video: http://www.boomershoot.org/2005/KING5.wmv. But you didn’t do that. You merely demonstrated you are a Puritan–afraid that someone, someplace, is having fun.