The Guns of Spring

[Richard]

No propaganda here - the latest balanced opinion piece on the 2nd Amendment from Pravda on the Hudson.

Richard's $.02

The Guns of Spring
Timothy Egan, NYT, 9 Apr 2009

Bam, bam, bam. Three dead in Pittsburgh, cops, all of them, murdered by a man with an AK-47 who thought President Obama was going to take away his guns.

Bam, bam, bam, bam. Four dead in Oakland, also police officers, their lives ended by a convict with an assault rifle.

Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. Five dead in Washington State, kids mowed down in a trailer park by their own dad, a wife-abusing coward with a gun.

Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. Thirteen dead in Binghamton, N.Y., immigrants and their teachers slaughtered by a shut-in with a Glock and Beretta. He sent a delusional note, in fractured English but for the sendoff: “And you have a nice day.”

American life in the spring of 2009 is full of hope, peril, and then this: the cancer at the core of our democracy.

In a month of violence gruesome even by our own standards, 57 people have lost their lives in eight mass shootings. The killing grounds include a nursing home, a center for new immigrants, a child’s bedroom. Before that it was a church, a college, a daycare center.

We hear about these sketches of carnage between market updates and basketball scores — and shrug. We’re the frogs slow-boiling in the pot, taking it all in incrementally until we can’t feel a thing. We shrug because that’s the deal, right? That’s the pact we made, the price of Amendment number two to the Constitution, right after freedom of speech.

As a Westerner, I’m sensitive to the argument that when politicians reflexively move to ban guns every after a high-profile slaughter, they often target law-abiding gun owners. Guns in the West are heritage, “a sacred part of being a Montanan and something that we will always fight to protect,” as Senators Jon Tester and Max Baucus, both Democrats from the Big Sky state, wrote in a recent letter to the Justice Department.

But as someone who lost a nephew to gun violence, [!!!] I can only take these arguments so far. They are not abstractions, one side versus the other. I can’t help seeing faces, parents who no longer have a child to hold, hearts broken, lives destroyed when I hear bam, bam, bam.

A mother and her little girl, gunned down along with eight others in Samson, Ala., last month, were buried in each other’s arms — the still life of that second amendment.

In the aftermath of one of these atrocities, nothing is more chilling than a gun advocate racing before a camera to embrace a lunatic’s right to carry and kill.

If it was peanut butter or pistachio nuts taking down people by the dozens every week, we’d be all over it. Witness the recent recalls. But Glocks and AKs — can’t touch ‘em. So we’re awash in guns: 280 million.

Live with it, gun owners say, and if our murder rate is three times that of the United Kingdom and Canada, five times that of Germany, that’s the deal. The price. For consolation, I guess, there is the fact that the homicide rate has been flat for some time, down from the highs of the 1980s. Still, nearly 17,000 Americans are murdered each year — about 70 percent by guns — and 594,276 lost their lives betweens 1976 and 2005.

The recent twists involve Mexican drug cartels, who get their firepower from American retailers, [Guess he doesn't listen to NPR.] and the mass killings this spring by shooters who appear to have acquired their weapons legally. Assault rifles figured prominently in the murders of seven police officers.

The Pittsburgh shooter picked up his AK-47 through an online company that passed the sale through to a licensed firearms dealer, as required. He was apparently legal for these guns despite the fact that he’d been booted from the Marines for assaulting his drill sergeant and had a restraining order from his ex-girlfriend.

All a citizen can do is ask for some common sense around the Second Amendment. The assault weapons ban, outlawing 19 military style guns that no hunter with sense of fair play would ever use, ( ) should be reinstated. President Bush and Congress let it expire in 2004, even though it was a godsend for police officers and supported by a majority of gun owners.

To the senators who back assault rifles while speaking of the “sacred part of being a Montanan,” you don’t want this kind of heritage. It demeans you as Westerners to allow easy access to weapons that kill innocents, and it does a disservice to history.

Heritage? Old West towns like Dodge City had strict gun control, making people check their weapons at the city doorstep.

And the gun dealers, they should be hammered for selling to drug cartels or through loopholes to convicts. Throw federal racketeering laws at them. Make it as hard for a wife-beater or a felon to get an AK as it is to get a driver’s license.

The rest of us can only mourn and shrug, marking grim anniversaries: Virginia Tech, Columbine, and on, and on, and on.

http://egan.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/0...uns-of-spring/

[HOLLiS]

The war on private ownership is escalating.

[Surgicalcric]

What an asshat...

Let us rally to ban pencils so idiots can no longer write shit like this.

[Team Sergeant]

Originally Posted by HOLLiS

The war on private ownership is escalating.

Bring it.......

I saw a bumper sticker yesterday I liked:

I'll keep my guns, Freedom and money, you can keep the "Change".



Again, bring it......

TS

[FMF DOC]

Excellant bumper sticker, will look for that one...

Maybe if more citizens had their Conceal Carry Permits, the things mention above may have been stopped before the casulties escalated. The media will never print all the of the crimes that lawbiding citizens have stopped by owning a weapon.

[Kyobanim]

I see that he neglects to say that if the current laws on the books were enforced, none of those incidents would have taken place.

Should have had him fixed instead of my dog.

[DinDinA-2]

The Guns of Spring
Timothy Egan, NYT, 9 Apr 2009
________________________________________________

What a nit-wit...if you outlaw idiots in the media, only idiots will be in the media. Wait, they already are!!

It is always interesting they always bring up countries with gun bans, however a great deal of those populations...given the chance...would move to this country in a hurry.

Maybe it is time to ban the automobile and enforce public transportation. Afterall, look at the carnage on the highways. And what about those pesky drug dealers using automobiles to transport drugs & guns etc. Eliminate private transportation and the drug problem is solved!

[KClapp]

Originally Posted by Team Sergeant

I saw a bumper sticker yesterday I liked:

I'll keep my guns, Freedom and money, you can keep the "Change".

I found these on ebay for $2.99 each, shipped. I got several to take to the tea party in Des Moines and share with the folks in IowaCarry. Thanks TS!

[swpa19]

A few things not reported:

Bam, bam, bam. Three dead in Pittsburgh, cops, all of them, murdered by a man with an AK-47 who thought President Obama was going to take away his guns.

It is true that this pond scum did mention to friends that he was concerned with Obama's stand on firearms. But, the un-reported truth by the MSM is this:

This dick and his mom got into an argument about a dog taking a leak on the carpet. The mom wanted to go back to sleep but the nutcase wouldnt let it go. The mother finally called 911 and asked that her son be removed from the residence. 911 operator asked if there were firearms involved (this is on tape) the mom said yes, but theyre all legal.

911 passed info on to Police Dispatch, but failed to mention the fact that the suspect was heavily armed, and the incident was treated as a domestic disturbance.

The suspect armed himself and donned his tactical vest and waited for police to arrive. He killed these brave officers not because of Obama's stand on gun control but, purely for the sake of killing.

And, as Kyobanim says: New gun legislation is not the answer. We have more than enough gun laws on the books.

[greenberetTFS]

Originally Posted by KClapp

I found these on ebay for $2.99 each, shipped. I got several to take to the tea party in Des Moines and share with the folks in IowaCarry. Thanks TS!

KClapp,

Please show the URL you used to find this site..................

GB TFS

[Kyobanim]

http://www.discountbookdistributors....ersticker.aspx

[Sigaba]

Originally Posted by rltipton

Let us rally to ban pencils so idiots can no longer write shit like this.

Maybe someone who has the stomach for such a project could go through the last ten years of the New York Times and find examples of how the Gray Lady contributed to many of today's issues through sloppy reporting, missed stories, and bad editing.

I am beginning to think that the nytimes.com charges such high fees for getting articles out of its digital archives so readers will be discouraged from realizing how far the quality of the paper has fallen.

[Richard]

I am beginning to think that the nytimes.com charges such high fees for getting articles out of its digital archives so readers will be discouraged from realizing how far the quality of the paper has fallen.

And I'm beginning to think you're right!

Richard's $.02

[PSM]

LET'S ALL SURRENDER OUR WEAPONS -- YOU FIRST!
by Ann Coulter
April 8, 2009

The rash of recent shooting incidents has led people who wouldn't know an AK-47 from a paintball gun to issue demands for more restrictions on guns. To be sure, it's hard to find any factor in these shootings that could be responsible -- other than the gun.

So far, this year's public multiple shootings were committed by:

-- Richard Poplawski, 23, product of a broken family, expelled from high school and dishonorably discharged from the Marines, who killed three policemen in Pittsburgh.

-- Former crack addict Jiverly Wong, 41, who told co-workers "America sucks" yet somehow was not offered a job as a speechwriter for Barack Obama. Wong blockaded his victims in a civic center in Binghamton, N.Y., and shot as many people as he could, before killing himself.

-- Robert Stewart, 45, a three-time divorcee and high school dropout with "violent tendencies" -- according to one of his ex-wives -- who shot up the nursing home in Carthage, N.C., where his newly estranged wife worked.

-- Lovelle Mixon, 26, a paroled felon, struggling to get his life back on track by pimping, who shot four cops in Oakland, Calif. -- before eventually being shot himself.

-- Twenty-eight-year-old Michael McLendon, child of divorce, living with his mother and boycotting family funerals because he hated his relatives, who killed 10 of those relatives and their neighbors in Samson, Ala.

It might make more sense to outlaw men than guns. Or divorce. Or crack. Or to prohibit felons from having guns. Except we already outlaw crack and felons owning guns and yet still, somehow, Wong got crack and Mixon got a gun.

After being pulled over for a routine traffic violation, Lovelle Mixon did exactly what they teach in driver's ed by immediately shooting four cops. Mixon's supporters held a posthumous rally in his honor, claiming he shot the cops only in "self-defense," which I take it includes the cop Mixon shot while the officer was lying on the ground.

I guess Mixon also raped that 12-year-old girl in "self-defense." Clearly, the pimping industry has lost a good man. I wish I'd known him. I tip my green velvet fedora with the dollar signs all over it to him. Why do the good ones always die young? Pimps, I mean.

Liberals tolerate rallies on behalf of cop-killers, but they prohibit law-abiding citizens working at community centers in Binghamton, N.Y., from being armed to defend themselves from disturbed, crack-addicted America-haters like Jiverly Wong.

It's something in liberals' DNA: They think they can pass a law eliminating guns and nuclear weapons, but teenagers having sex is completely beyond our control.

The demand for more gun control in response to any crime involving a gun is exactly like Obama's response to North Korea's openly belligerent act of launching a long-range missile this week: Obama leapt to action by calling for worldwide nuclear disarmament.

If the SAT test were used to determine how stupid a liberal is, one question would be: "The best defense against lawless rogues who possess _______ is for law-abiding individuals to surrender their own _______________."

Correct answer: Guns. We would also have accepted nuclear weapons.

Obama explained that "the United States has a moral responsibility" to lead disarmament efforts because America is "the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon."

So don't go feeling all morally superior to a country whose business model consists of exporting heroin, nuclear bombs and counterfeit U.S. dollars, and of importing Swedish prostitutes, you yahoo Americans with your little flag lapel pins.

On the other hand, the Japanese haven't acted up much in the last, say, 64 years ...

Fortunately, our sailors didn't wait around for Obama to save them when Somali pirates boarded their ship this week. Stop right now or I'll ask the U.N. to remind the "international community" that "the U.S. is not at war with Somali pirates."

Gun-toting Americans are clearly more self-sufficient than the sissy Europeans. This is great news for everyone except Barney Frank, who's always secretly wondered what it would be like to be taken by a Somali pirate.

Police -- whom I gather liberals intend to continue having guns -- and intrepid U.N. resolution drafters can't be everywhere, all the time.

If a single civilian in that Binghamton community center had been armed, instead of 14 dead, there might have only been one or two -- including the shooter. In the end, the cops didn't stop Wong. His killing spree ended only when he decided to stop, and he killed himself.

"The shooter will eventually run out of ammo" strategy may not be the best one for stopping deranged multiple murderers.

But it's highly unlikely that any community center in the entire state would be safe from a disturbed former crack-addict like Wong because New York's restrictive gun laws require a citizen to prove he has a need for a gun to obtain a concealed carry permit.

Instead of having Planned Parenthood distribute condoms in schools, they ought to get the NRA to pass out revolvers. It would save more lives.

COPYRIGHT 2009 ANN COULTER
DISTRIBUTED BY UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE
1130 Walnut, Kansas City, MO 64106

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