Category Archives: Gun Rights

Justice

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Billy Beck wanted some discussion on the matter of Eric Holder a while back, but I didn’t see much of it.

While I agree with Beck’s sentiment, I question the idea of firing Holder’s ashes from a cannon into Mexico.  It could be seen as an act of hostility toward Mexico, but then I wonder if that would be such a bad thing.

I’d be OK with the extradition of Eric Holder to Mexico (alive or dead) but only after he received justice here in the U.S.  That is both our right and our grave responsibility.

But justice for the pawn is only the beginning, not an end.  It would be a mistake to focus on the lieutenant to such a degree as to forget his commander.

Quote of the day—Jeff Knox

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It infuriates me when I hear “reporting” and editorializing about “the powerful Gun Lobby” and “the intransigent Gun Lobby” and sometimes even “the evil Gun Lobby,” as if we were a handful of rich fat cats in safari shirts sitting in a mahogany-lined room full of leather, stuffed animals, and cigar smoke plotting how to increase our profits by increasing crime. We are the people! We are the 80 to 90 million people in this country who own guns and the tens of millions more who do not own guns, but fully support our right to do so.

Jeff Knox
December 17, 2011
I Am The Gun Lobby
[This excellent rant should become a classic. Please read the whole thing and remind those who refer to the NRA as “the gun lobby” that we are the gun lobby.

H/T Say Uncle.—Joe]

They can’t hold a candle to a gun

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As pointed out by Sebastian Bitter the Brady Campaign had a “big announcement”. While it’s overstating things a bit to say, “Yes, they want you to light a candle. Because candles will stop violence.” it’s not overstating it by very much.

It’s the Brady Campaign’s latest effort to dance in the blood of victims. And it’s a very pathetic effort too.

They literally say, “Imagine stopping a bullet before it kills a child. Impossible? Not with your help! All across America people are coming together to save lives from preventable gun violence. Will you join them, and the Brady Campaign, as we host a nationwide candlelight vigil to honor victims of gun violence?”

“Coming together to save lives” with candles? Saying “No” over the sights of a firearm works much better.

And many of the locations ban the use of real candles!

As pathetic as that is there is even more pathetic information between the lines on their web site.

They list a number of locations where you can join in a “National Candlelight Vigil”. The interesting thing is they only list 28 locations in 15 states. There are no events in many of the cities and states where they claim to have chapters. This includes the supposed chapter in Arizona! This state in particular is significant because the event date, January 8th, was chosen as the anniversary of the shooting of Tucson, Arizona shooting in which Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) was severely wounded and six people were killed.

Here are the supposed Brady chapters that are not listed as participating in this “big event”:

If those “chapters” can’t find enough people willing to show up and hold a candle for a few minutes then they don’t have the capacity to accomplish any real task. They are nothing more than specks of ASCII text adrift in the galactic Internet.

As an organization they are in the process of collapsing. This is good but we need to drive them into political extinction, organizational bankruptcy, and then mock, shame, and shun the individuals into the dustbin of history.

This is what happens in places without guns—Case XXV

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Via Barron.

From the U.K. New Jersey (Thanks ubu52, Barron said U.K. and I didn’t read my own copy and paste of the article, sorry about that) where guns are not allowed. Hence two young thugs can beat up on an old homeless guy without fear of meaningful self-defense or someone else defending their innocent victims:

A pair of cruel youths wished a bloody homeless man ‘Merry Christmas’ after brutally beating him and stealing his bicycle near the New Jersey shore.

Police tracked down and arrested 20-year-old Taylor Giresi and his 17-year-old cameraman after the boys posted a video of their crimes in two videos on YouTube.

The footage shows Giresi stalking through the woods in Wall Township, New Jersey, after declaring: ‘About to go beat up this bum.’

DavidIvins

‘About to be a knockout,’ the 17-year-old responds with a laugh, according to an account by the Asbury Park Press.

Quote of the day—Robb Allen

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Filthy cretins. They should be treated with all the respect of a Klansman. Well, I don’t want to insult Klansmen like that. At least with the KKK, they don’t go around trying to tell people they’re actually concerned about the rights of blacks.

Robb Allen
December 20, 2011
Not only do they lie about practically everything
[He’s referring to the Brady Campaign.

I think the problem is that they have lost control of their world. It used to be they could say anything and the press would repeat it far and wide. When it was published in a magazine or even a newspaper the ability of gun owners to respond was delayed by days or even months and the editors could easily suppress those responses or select the weakest response while pretending to be fair. In that world Handgun Control, Inc./The Brady Campaign was in the “drivers seat”. They controlled the message and whatever fantasy they wanted to believe became, in essence, reality.

With the presence of the Internet those days are gone. Reality isn’t optional for them anymore. They are being forced to deal with the facts and with the facts being incompatible with their view of the world they have a crisis on their hands. They could adapt to reality but that isn’t really an option for them. They have far too much invested in their fantasy world.

Imagine you have invested 20 years of your life in the belief in a flat earth or the moon is made of green cheese. You spread your word far and wide and you have been the darling of the media and many politicians all this time. Then astronauts land on the moon take pictures of a round earth and bring back rock samples of the surface. You have two options: 1) Change your beliefs and admit to the world you have been spreading falsehoods for decades; 2) Insist the trip to the moon was a hoax.

The “psychological cost” to admit an error of such magnitude is far greater than believing in a massive hoax. To protect the belief there was a hoax and to prevent followers from deserting the data must be suppressed. With the presence of the Internet that is nearly impossible except within a very small domain. Within the domain of control expect even the slightest deviation from their “true belief” to be dealt with as harshly as possible. It gives them back a small taste of the control of their world which they enjoyed for so long and have now lost. They know what it is like to have control and they yearn for it again.

This is why anti-gun people are so violent. If they had guns or even political power they would be extremely dangerous people. —Joe]

Quote of the day—Daisy Arizona

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This is the perfect example of the paranoid lunatic weirdo freak NRA. Guys! Allow me to share a little…r­eally little fact…The­y are guns…not your penis.

Daisy Arizona
December 2, 2011
Comment to Gun Ad Likens Obama To Hitler, Other Dictators.
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!—Joe]

Quote of the day—Diane S. Sykes

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On appeal the City raised but did not dwell on its concern about lead contamination. For good reason: It cannot be taken seriously as a justification for banishing all firing ranges from the city. To raise it at all suggests pretext.

Perhaps the City can muster sufficient evidence to justify banning firing ranges everywhere in the city, though that seems quite unlikely. As the record comes to us at this stage of the proceedings, the firing-range ban is wholly out of proportion to the public interests the City claims it serves. Accordingly, the plaintiffs’ Second Amendment claim has a strong likelihood of success on the merits.

…

For the foregoing reasons, we REVERSE the district court’s order denying the plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction and REMAND with instructions to enter a preliminary injunction consistent with this opinion.

Diane S. Sykes
July 6, 2011
Circuit Judge
United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit
RHONDA EZELL, et al., v. CITY OF CHICAGO
[See also other QOTDs I have posted from this same judgment here, here, here, and here.

The response of the Chicago and Washington D.C. reminds me of the response of politicians in the deep south confronted with civil rights laws telling them they had to treat people with dark colored skin the same as those with white skin. They became very creative in their methods of discrimination and the Federal courts were kept busy for years putting them in their place.

But the courts can only do so much. What has to happen is for these people be shamed and shunned for their persistence in discriminating against people exercising a specific enumerated right. Treat them like the scumbags they are and tell them that to their faces.—Joe]

Quote of the day—jumkey

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What, only 3 dead children?

Gun owners had better step up their war on elementary school-age children and babies. They’ll never get them all only shooting three at a time.

jumkey
December 17, 2011
Comment to Sheriff: 5 dead in Ill. murder-suicide
[I don’t think any comment beyond the post category of “Crap for brains” is necessary.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Linoge

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The anti-rights cultists’ logic fails: on the one hand, we are supposedly high-strung, hair-trigger murderers just waiting for any and all excuses to “whip out our pieces” and go on a shooting rampage, but on the other hand, “gun control” extremists feel quite comfortable insulting and attacking us on a regular basis.

Linoge
December 12, 2011
Comment to Quote of the day—lonewolfwisconsin.
[Made QOTD at the suggestion of Windy Wilson.

It’s a good point but I’m sort of dulled from the continuous expose to the irrationality of anti-gun people. These people live with one foot into an alternate universe where the potentialities of their active imaginations are just as real, if not more so, than reality itself. I wish there were a way to make it sink in that potentialities are not actualities.

We are constrained to live in the real world. Neither the utopia they try to legislate nor the “gun-owners will start shooing over parking spaces” universe they imagine are supported by the evidence gathered from all the different legislative experiments run in all the states and the Feds in the last several decades.

Being unconstrained by reality is probably good for art but makes for very poor public policy.—Joe]

Quote of the day—edgeninja

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The NRA should be referred to as the Assassin’s Lobby, since their advocacy primarily helps arm terrorists and mass-murde­rers.

edgeninja
December 2, 2011
Comment to Gun Ad Likens Obama To Hitler, Other Dictators.
[It’s good to know what they think of us. This should also be a hint as to what will happen to us if our political power becomes too weak.

Perhaps that explains why the terrorist watch list is so large. They are putting all 4.3 million NRA members on it.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Conservative4Ever

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I had to go talk to my guns just now to let them know If I let them walk that they will be responsible for the violence they cause.

Liberals kill me by their complete lack of logic and reasoning abilities. They are like children.

Hence my talking to guns like they were children.

Conservative4Ever
December 9, 2011
Comment to Gunwalker goes “legal” … again
[He is insulting children. By the age of four my children had better reasoning abilities that some of the anti-gun people I’ve dealt with.—Joe]

Christmas gifts for the Brady’s

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By all accounts guns and associated gear are a big sellers for Christmas this year. Here is what one article says:

A sale for a basic Russian-made rifle — priced to move at $79.99, bayonet included — was targeted at bargain shoppers buying gifts for a first-time shooter.

“I’ve had little old ladies come in… and buy them by the crate for gifts for all the men in the family,” he said. “Across the board, we used to sell to men, adult men, ages 18 to 45. Now we’re advertising to everybody.”

According to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, handgun production and imports more than doubled between 2005 and 2009 to 4.6 million, as changes in many laws have relaxed restrictions on carrying such weapons. Gallup’s annual crime poll in October showed record low support for a handgun ban for civilians. It was also the first time the poll found greater opposition to a ban on semiautomatic guns or assault rifles than support for such a restriction.

Say Uncle said Cheaper Than Dirt was running ads on the radio in his home town. I’ve been hearing them on a Seattle radio station too.

This made me wonder; What would be an appropriate gift for someone still aligned with The Brady Campaign? Mailing them a gun is out because that is still illegal. Ammo would be pointless because they probably don’t own any guns. Tequila has it’s appeal but a little birdy once told me someone at the Brady Campaign had a really bad drinking problem already and it wouldn’t be appropriate to tempt them. I can understand the temptation to give whiskey and sleeping pills but the humor would probably be lost on them. A one-way ticket to the “gun-free” utopia of the U.K. would probably be well received but it’s too expensive. I could see a Sad Panda being acceptable but it’s a little “down” and I think they really need something to cheer them up after all they have been through the last few years.

Therefore I believe some suggestions for a name change would be the ideal Christmas gift. With a name change they could have a chance of starting over without so much anti-gun baggage. They already changed their name from oppressive “Handgun Control Inc.” to the neutral sounding “The Brady Campaign”. It’s now time for something positive. They already say they are defending the Second Amendment (H/T to Sebastian) so here are my suggestions:

Second Amendment Supporters: The plan would be to beg for a buyout from The Second Amendment Foundation. But a SAF audit would find their computers are so old they are still running Windows 95, they are behind on the rent for their office space, Dennis Henigan doesn’t have a clue what Alan Gura is talking about, and the only the people on their mailing list that have donated any money in the last two years are a few people on the board of directors who stopped payment on the last check they gave them.

Handgunning and Running for Fun and Profit: They could start out helping the ATF run guns into Mexico then transition into USPSA/IPDA training.

And my favorite suggestion is Gunowners Anonymous: Initially they could offer to help people with their “gun addictions” but when no one shows up they could transition into a service to anonymize gun purchases.

Quote of the day—Jeff Cooper

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Rumor has it that Sarah Brady is being put forward by the Shooting Industry Magazine as “saleswoman of the decade.” It is quite obvious that Sarah has done more to boost the sale of personal arms than any person in recent memory, and she should be appropriately honored.

Jeff Cooper
From Jeff Cooper’s Commentaries
Vol. 2, No. 4
22 March 1994
[This is in response to Ken in the comments here who suggested Clinton popularity and success meant people didn’t buy guns for fear they would be taken away shortly. And that the surge in sales at about the same time as Obama was elected were due to the Heller decision and not the threat of Obama.

But it that were true then why was there a big surge in sales during the first part of the Clinton presidency? I was there at the time. I was one of the people buying my first guns. Nearly everyone I talked to about guns were buying things they were afraid would soon be outlawed.

If you read the book Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun you will find a similar thing happened with Glock pistols. Politicians and anti-gun people started talking about it being a “terrorist gun”, “invisible to X-Rays”, and they should be banned with the result the factory couldn’t manufacture them fast enough to keep up with the demand.—Joe]

Denial, deception, or refusal to answer?

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As was widely reported at least ten days ago Dennis Henigan was in denial about the number of guns being purchased. He has a lot invested in that belief because The Brady Campaign has repeatedly said gun ownership is on the decline:

The report they quote was published by the Violence Policy Center. The VPC relied on gun data from the General Social Survey (GSS) conducted by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago.

The tabular data agrees with the VPC report. But what is interesting is (as of 2001):

Trends in Gun Ownership
The proportion of households with a firearm has been in slow decline over the last quarter century (Table 6). In the early 1970s about 50% of adults lived in households that kept a firearm. This now has fallen about 34-35%. Similarly, the percent of adults living in a household with a gun fell from a high of 51 % in 1977 to a low of 32-33% in 2000-2001. These declines are partly the result of a decrease in household size. From 1980 until 1997 the proportion of adults personally owning a gun held steady at about 29%. However, since then even this level declined to about 22-24% of adults personally owning a gun.

One of ways people can “cheat without lying” with these statistics is to choose which number make their case look better when there is actually another variable that is changing. In this case the size of household affected the numbers.

In tough economic times households tend to get larger and hence the likelihood of someone owning a gun in the house could increase without the actual number of people owning guns increasing. Hence during good economic times the anti-gun people could chose to report declining “gun in the household” number while ignoring the fact that gun ownership on an individual basis was essentially constant.

I was unable to obtain the percentage of adults that own guns from the GSS data. Perhaps someone else can see a way to do it.

What is very interesting that I was able to get from the data is the number of people that refused to answer the question, given that a gun was in the house, “DOES GUN BELONG TO RESPONDENT?”

Year Percent Refusing
1991 0.0
1993 1.4
1994 0.6
1996 0.8
1998 1.0
2000 3.6
2002 2.4
2004 3.6
2006 4.7

The number of people that refused to answer the question about a gun in the home was smaller but had a similar trend:

Year Percent Refusing
1991 1.2
1993 0.6
1994 0.9
1996 0.4
1998 0.4
2000 1.3
2002 0.9
2004 1.4
2006 1.7

I would expect the upward trend to continue in 2008 and 2010 because of the mass buying associated with the election of President Obama.

I’m not sure that I have a good explanation for why the Gallup Poll reported gun in the home rate is much higher than reported by GSS (for the most recent GSS year I could find, 2006, is it 42% versus 34.5%). My speculation is that people are more trusting of Gallup than of a much lesser known organization located in an extremely anti-gun city such as Chicago. If that is true then one must also conclude that at something on the order of 5.8%* of the gun-owners lied and said “No” when asked if there was a gun in the house rather than merely refused to answer the question.

* 5.8% is obtained from (42% – 34.5%) – 1.7%

You can’t fix stupid

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This post is essentially all plagiarized from various people on the email discussion list at work about this event (more details can be found here):

A pistol discovered in a passenger’s carry-on bag was accidentally fired inside the Atlanta airport, grazing a police officer, authorities said on Monday.

Security screeners at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport spotted the .22-caliber pistol Sunday via an X-ray machine and notified Atlanta police, Transportation Security Administration spokesman Jonathan Allen said.

Authorities said the gun was loaded with five rounds of ammunition known as “snake shot,” which typically is used to kill small animals. As a police officer tried to remove the rounds while pointing the weapon at a screening table, the gun was unintentionally fired, according to an incident report.

…

The passenger, a 43-year-old Georgia man, was arrested on weapons charges and remained in jail early on Monday. He told police that he “travels to Florida often on business and keeps the weapon on him for protection, not to kill anyone but in an attempt to scare people off,” the report said.

It was stupid to attempt going though the TSA screeners with a firearm. It was stupid for the police officer to fire the gun. It was stupid to carry snake loads for self protection against humans. It was stupid to carry a firearm to only scare people.

Quote of the day—ContrarianbyDefault

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These people need to get laid. The persistent fears of some authority coming to take their guns (see: power, virility, agency) speaks to a rather deep seated insecurity of impotence and phallic malfunctio­n. I don’t mind someone owning a handgun for protection of property or self, but the stockpilin­g of assault rifles either means they’re borderline­, paranoid sociopaths or they’re desperatel­y overcompen­sating for some other shortcomin­gs…

ContrarianbyDefault
December 2, 2011
Comment to Gun Ad Likens Obama To Hitler, Other Dictators.
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!—Joe]

Quote of the day—Christopher Merken

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Guns are designed with one purpose only: to kill. Ending a life is the purpose of a gun. The argument that it’s preventative, that it’s the “well it’s either me or the guy coming through my door” mentality, or that guns create a safer society is just plain wrong. Guns are designed to kill. A specially designed piece of metal, slotted into another piece of metal and projected at incredible speeds at another person is designed to kill. There is no way to deny, refute, or get around this simple fact. So why are guns allowed? Why do we as a society accept these dangerous weapons into our community?

Christopher Merken
December 8, 2011
Another Virginia Tech Shooting, and What Should Be Done About It: It’s time to take a stand against gun violence
[Heavy sigh. Here we go again.

I’ve fired about 100,000 rounds through my guns without killing anything but two deer and a rattlesnake. By his logic my guns must have malfunctioned with nearly every shot.

He offers no studies to support his assertions. The best he can do is proof by vigorous assertion.

He asks, “Why are guns allowed?” as if that which government does not allow is forbidden. He apparently missed out on the high school government class where it was taught that government is only allowed certain enumerated powers and the people retain all other rights and powers. He has it exactly backward.

He’s got crap for brains.—Joe]

Australia gun control is going ‘backward’

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Although from my viewpoint I don’t see a lot of progress being made in Australia the gun control people are screaming bloody murder:

David Shoebridge says NSW has gone backwards on gun control.

As near as I can tell the problem for these people is that people are following the law and buying guns:

Figures obtained by The Sunday Telegraph show there are 188,885 people on the NSW Police Firearms Register, just short of the estimated 200,000 licence holders pre- the Port Arthur massacre, which triggered changes to gun laws.

NSW Greens described the increase as “alarming” and gun control groups warned that more and more firearms would end up on the black market.

“The trend is all one-way in NSW; that is, more guns and more gun owners and that is a dangerous trend,” NSW Greens MP David Shoebridge said.

“There’s a real concern where we are developing a gun culture here in NSW. A good part of the problem comes from the influence of the Shooters Party and the Gun Council here in NSW. We need this government to stand up to the gun lobby to restrict access, particularly to handguns, and ensure the current restrictions remain in place.”

It’s interesting and revealing that this politician wants to reduce the number of gun owners rather than just restrict the type of guns and that owners be licensed and their guns registered. It was the hope that the restrictions would decrease the number of gun owners. The ultimate goal of the anti-gun people must be, always has been, and always will be a complete ban.

Quote of the day—lonewolfwisconsin

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I am sick and tired of you pussygunbo­ys crying about your gunpowder and calling everyone names. You can now carry your precious guns anywhere, and there has been NO ATTEMPTS to restrict gun ownership in over 50 years. Just go to your KKK meetings and shutthehel­lup.

lonewolfwisconsin
December 2, 2011
Comment to Gun Ad Likens Obama To Hitler, Other Dictators.
[No attempts in over 50 years? So that would be since 1961.

lonewolfwisconsin must be from an alternate universe where the NRA aligned themselves with the KKK instead of the blacks defending themselves from the KKK. In that alternate universe none of the following gun restrictions and bans succeeded or thousands attempts occurred:

  • 1968: Gun Control Act
  • 1976: Washington D.C. bans handguns and all other firearms must be rendered inoperable.
  • 1981: Morton Grove Illinois bans the sale, transportation, and ownership of handguns.
  • 1982: Chicago bans new registration of handguns.
  • 1982: Evanston, Illinois bans handguns.
  • 1984: Oak Park Illinois bans handguns.
  • 1986: Sales of new machine guns banned nationwide.
  • 1989: Highland Park Illinois bans handguns.
  • 1989: California bans “assault weapons”.
  • 1991: New Jersey bans “assault weapons”.
    • 1991: New York City bans “assault weapons” and gun registration lists were used by police to go door-to-door to confiscate them.
    • 1992: Chicago bans “assault weapons”.
    • 1993: Connecticut bans “assault weapons”.
    • 1993: Brady Act.
    • 1994: Sales of new “Assault weapons” and magazines holding more than 10 rounds are banned nationwide.
    • 2000: New York state bans “assault weapons”.
    • 2004: Massachusetts (Mitt Romney, as governor, signed the bill into law) bans “assault weapons”.
    • 2005: New Orleans sends the police and the National Guard door to door to confiscate all firearms in the wake of hurricane Katrina.

    Either this is convincing proof that alternate universes exist or lonewolfwisconsin has crap for brains.

    I’m going with crap for brains unless lonewolfwisconsin can demonstrate they are a disoriented time traveler from sometime prior to about 1865 (I know there have been periodic gun control attempts since at least the end of the Civil War).—Joe]

    Sweet!

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    A very nice article on the growing acceptance of guns in American culture with particular emphasis on women, gays, and Jews:

    Natanel is a Buddhist, a self-avowed “spiritual person,”a 53-year-old divorcee who lives alone in a liberal-leaning suburb near Boston. She is 5-foot-1 (155 centimeters) and has blonde hair, dark eyes, a ready smile and a soothing voice, with a hint of Boston brogue. She’s a Tai Chi instructor who in classes invokes the benefits of meditation. And at least twice a month, she takes her German-made Walther PK380 to a shooting range and blazes away.

    They give two token paragraphs to The Brady Campaign and a couple more to other anti-gun people but their arguments ring hollow with all the other very positive coverage.

    And the icing that makes it so sweet is that it is on Bloomberg News.