Tag: guns

No, it’s not easier to buy a firearm than it is to vote for the first time

I started this post from seeing a Leftist blue-check-mark claim that in Pennsylvania you can buy a gun and walk out with it that same day but it takes a month to register to vote. Okay?… I mean – I’m not confused at the point the lady was attempting – she’s saying that protecting yourself shouldn’t be easier than voicing what brand of authoritarian control should rule over you and your neighbor — it’s just a dumb point is all.

Idk if that’s true or not in Pennsylvania specifically. It’s not true generally – something we’ve known for years since Barack Obama made the same claim and it was debunked – but why let the truth get in the way of a perfectly good emotionally-persuasive talking point amirite? But on PA specifically – idk – but I’m not gonna look it up cuz it doesn’t matter. 

Voting is not a right. Firearm ownership is. 

When elected representatives openly say that non-rights should be easier to access than your Constitutionally guaranteed rights – then you know you’re looking at an authoritarian douchebag.

My states new senator, Alex Padilla, who was appointed to Kamala Harris’ Senate seat, and many wondered if he would live up to Officer Harris’ authoritarianism, did his predecessor proud by repeating the falsehood (tweeted here by CBS News without commentary or fact-checking, of course):

“In a majority of states” means that Padilla is claiming that in at least 26 states it’s easier to buy a gun than it is to vote for the first time. It isn’t. 

Even if it is true that in Pennsylvania you can get a same-day firearm purchase, all 50 states have eligibility requirements and you have to pass a background check, present a valid, pay taxes and fees to the government for the purchase, and I would imagine that even in a quick-buy state like maybe-PA-is, that a good percentage of the time the person would still end up having to wait days or weeks for their firearm to be in their possession. Soooo. If we could just make voting as “easy” as it is in that allegedly most-easy state then that’d be a good start, yea. 

If Republicans had any balls then they would call Democrats’ bluff on this talking point and try to make their false claim a reality by introducing a bill that makes what they’re claiming so. Democrats would vote against it because they’re using the false talking point negatively, but it would illustrate that it’s 1- not currently true, and 2- force Democrats to go on record by way of a vote that they want power more than they want you to have protection.

David Harsanyi articulates how that could work:

Of course, we would be able to test Padilla’s contention by linking the two issues. Let’s pass an H.R. 1 for guns. If you can receive a ballot in the mail, then FedEx should be able to bring you an AR-15. If you can vote without photo ID, you should be able to buy a handgun without it, too. If we are to institute same-day registration and voting, then Americans should also enjoy same-day background checks and gun purchases. If we implement automatic voter registration for anyone using a government service, we should simultaneously implement automatic background checks that pre-clear them for gun ownership. If we’re going to pre-register 16 year olds as voters, let’s pre-register them for gun ownership, as well.

Stick your finger in the shoot hole

This image, which I have no reason to suspect as being even a real Change.org petition, let alone a sincere suggestion or genuine argument anyone had, but who knows – depicts a petition “To Hire 1,000,000 People To Put Their Fingers In The Shoot Hole Of Peoples’ Guns So They Can’t Shoot Them”…

Some might laugh but this is actually true. The circumference of the finger creates a seal at the tip and and when the gun is fired, the explosion is contained within the barrel, which swells like a snake that just ate a dog for a moment and then viola! -wait, no, that’s a string instrument. I mean: vuah-la! but how do you spell that? voilà! -the point is – harmless nonviolent solution. 

I’ve seen Bugs Bunny do it before, so don’t even try and argue.
Only fascists would oppose this.

Here’s the thread (from origins unknown):

No offense but your gun control arguments are kindov dumb

Cultural trends have made it an American tradition to freak out over gun laws as the culprit for the blood spilt after there is a mass murder with a gun (while mass murders using other more legally obtained objects like box cutters on 9/11 don’t share a similar discrimination after the event) and the Orlando gay club massacre was no different.

Obviously this is dopey, since murder is the bad part of the situation – not the thing a murderer uses to murder. So why is it so not obvious to so many? Emotional confirmation bias, mostly, is my guess. Because when you actually examine the prudence of what gun laws in America are vs the claims of what they should be, you don’t come up with a lot of murder prevention but you do come up with a lot of “protecting against getting murdered” prevention. The truth is that the so called loopholes in gun laws aren’t aiding any kind of pattern of gun abuse, and of course the blaring fact that America is awash with guns and crime is at a record low. So what’s the deal, yo?

Even though I don’t like guns and kindov want them all illegal, I don’t see the prudence in restricting them to the mass public when there are so many in the free flowing market to those with murderous intent. If you think laws are the answer to gun murders, why don’t you just make murder illegal, you dumb hippies? What makes people think that pre-meditated murder can be curtailed by laws offering punishment on the use or access of special kinds of weapons used to murder is beyond me – but more importantly – it’s beyond the people who think that as well, evidently. I know because I ask these people all the time and the lack of having thought about the fact that there is already a life sentence or lifetime imprisonment penalty in place on pre-meditated murder is always the most glaring take-away from the exchange.

As much as I don’t love being on the so called “gun nut” side of the issue, it seems fairly clear that more gun control measures than not are shady attempts at 2nd amendment suppression than they are stopping crazy people from getting deadly weapons in service to the public safety and I’m more interested in solving problems (see: preventing murder) than I am feeding my emotional distaste for weapons that easily (with the squeeze of a finger) take precious human life.

But these arguments that keep popping up all over the popular punditry and social media in the wake of a mass shooting are so non-persuasive that I get disappointed at those persuaded by them.

For instance, the idea that “semi-automatic”(“fully automatic” –aka- machine guns aren’t legal for civilian use) guns shouldn’t be legal. What? People should have to reload their weapon after every shot? So if you have multiple attackers you just have to call a time-out in between reloads? And I’m tired of hearing the canard about the 2nd amendment being made for (and thus only applies to) single firing muskets… Ignoring the history that that’s not even accurate since there were “multiple shot without having to reload in between every firing” firearms – or what we now call “semi-automatic” in existence at the time of the 2nd amendments drafting – the logic just doesn’t hold up to level-one scrutiny.

The right to protect yourself with projectile weaponry (that doesn’t require you to be physically strong, agile, or studied in martial arts or swordplay) is not changed by modernization any more than the right to speak freely without obstruction or persecution from the government is changed by modern methods of broadcasting and distribution. You dummies who think you’re so clever saying the 2nd amendment only applies to muskets that need to be reloaded after every firing are accidentally arguing for the First amendment to apply only to paper distribution of words and real-time vocalized speech (making it extra ironic when people make the “2nd amendment was for muskets” argument on digital distribution platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube – which I’m more than 90% sure wasn’t in circulation around the time the first amendment was drafted).

Usually the fall-back argument for this and every other Government led freedom restriction goes back to saying “you don’t need it though” as the crux of the argument justifying taking something away. It’s basically the essence of Leftism in one sentence, really: “I will decide what you need and then use the force of government [backed by guns] to make sure you don’t get more than what I have decided you need”.

A less totalitarian, less civil-liberty encroaching argument would be a focus on “if you are X, Y, Z [criminally ineligible to access firearms] then you cant have a gun” rather than the argument of “*you don’t need* [a gun that I think looks scary]”.

Why isn’t all of this obvious? The scary part is that I think it is but its just that emotional issues let individuals emotions redirect from the obvious.

I find that a lot more terrifying than non-restrictive gun laws.

It’s painfully obvious: More, not less guns, are the solution to gun murders

It’s getting hard to respect people who don’t realize that more, not less guns, are the solution to gun murders in America.

In other smaller, less free nations without equivalents to the 2nd amendment there may be different and better ways of going about pursuit of solution. The stats would appear to disagree with that, considering the gun deaths in other nations seem to rise in response to more gun restrictions, but no one seems to want to explore that very much. In England for example, gun deaths went up after more stringent gun laws were put in place, but that stat is ignored by the popular consensus to instead just focus on the fact that England has lower gun deaths than the United States. This is a comparison I’ve never understood the relevancy of when applied to America ever since Michael Moore used it in 2002’s Bowling For Columbine, but it remains appealing to people for whatever reason.

The answer to bad things people do in a free country is more freedom for civilians to police the bad things, not less freedom in attempts to stop bad things.

Did you hippies learn nothing from Star Wars? Lea tells Governor Tarkin that the more he tightens his grip, “the more star systems will slip through your fingers“. Where there is abhorrent speech in a country without government restriction on free speech, the Right answer (coincidentally both the “right” answer as in “correct” but also “right-wing”) is more speech to correct, shame, and ultimately overwhelm it. The Wrong answer is the Left’s answer, which is to remove speech they deem abhorrent, or potentially abhorrent, or just not 100% Leftist (thereby allegedly eliminating the path to potentially abhorrent thought or speech). It’s crazy totalitarianism when it comes to thoughts and speech but it’s downright dangerous when it comes to deadly weapons and self protection.

If your country has a right to firearms, then similarly like a country with a right to free expression – the answer to the bad parts is more good parts. More guns don’t automatically, mathematically equal Less Crime, but in the context of a free firearm owning nation the formula is solid.

Yet consistently, whenever there is a highly covered murder where guns are used, the emotional/politically-Leftist side of the country calls for more restriction on gun rights. The emotional appeal is obvious, but logically bananas (nonsensical).

At the time of this writing, the latest issue to spark this debate is a racially motivated murder of 9 people at a church in Charleston South Carolina. How would more gun laws have stopped this murder?
-By banning “assault rifles”? Nope; An assault rifle was not used in the murder.
-By instituting more strict gun registration laws? Nope; The gun used in the murder was not registered in accordance with the law.
-By outlawing the right to carry a gun? Nope; South Carolina doesn’t have concealed-carry laws or any carrying of a firearm without a permit.
-By banning guns inside churches (where the murder took place)? Nope; guns are already not allowed in churches in South Carolina.

I don’t know why this is shocking to you hippies, but: Murderers break laws. It’s unfortunate, but true. The bumper sticker “if you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns” is undeniably accurate since laws only affect the people who abide by them. When people break those laws, the knee-jerk reaction to make more laws to break is not intelligent. The proper response is to make breaking laws a horrible risk for lawbreakers in proportion to the crime. When the crime is murder, the risk of your attempt being thwarted by your injury or death should be raised, not lowered. The only way to raise the risk of injury or death to someone using a projectile weapon is to have other projectile weapons ready to be used against that rogue A-hole.


(Sign that appears at an Arkansas Christian Academy with armed teachers)

There is only one answer: Restricting the right to firearm ownership all together. This obvious point of mine was even echoed by none other than Karl Rove sparking a whole new debate but the base of it is true: you can’t have a country with an engrained right to firearms and no firearm deaths.

You have to repeal the right or reduce the deaths with safety and a balance of powers from armed law abiding citizens to balance the armed criminals. Those are the only options. Since repeal isn’t in the cards – more, not less guns are the answer to rampage shootings.