Dick's

Dick’s, Major Gun Retailer, Will Stop Selling Assault-Style Rifles

What, again?

They did this back in 2013.  Then lost a lotta customers so they quietly brought them back.  Here we are again, five years later?

I still hadn't gone back to their stores from the last time.  I don't patronize those that would restrict my liberty. 

Engage?

Ok, let's say we live in an ideal world.  We, as a society see the need to engage with folks locally to head off mass shootings.  And we do it.  Ideal society, and we now know who in the neighborhood is a little off and we are chatty and friendly with these folks.   And also keeping tabs on the children.

Then what?

Sure, I know folks that are a bit squirrelly.  Nice enough.  I interact with them plenty.  But I never invite them to the range.  They just seem hinky. 

Is that the person we need to worry about?  Ok, now what?  Snitch em out and either get their rights violated if the police swing into action, or get ignored by the same police.  Neither option is satisfactory, but a third effective, more sensitive and nuanced, option is only a remote possibility.

I don't think this engagement stuff is a panacea, though I wish it was.  In an ideal world, where we as a society change for the better overnight, I dunno if we stop atrocities in any meaningful way. 

This depresses me a bit.  But outlines the folly of notion of an inherently good and perfectible mankind. 

I don't want the world to be like this, but I am afraid it is

Overreach?

On pushing gun bans?

Naw.  Keep going.

Gun Reforms

You know, pass Grassley-Cruz, pass wide ranging reciprocity of CCW, let teachers in schools to carry if they want, some mental-health system reforms, take suppressors offa NFA, then... yeah sure.  Ban bump stocks.

I'd be cool with that.  Not happy with the ban, but... for the other stuff?  Ok. 

If you want to raise the purchase age to 21, I'll fight you, but I can be convinced.  Especially if there are exception, like 18 year old LEOs and people with a military ID being able to buy?  A lot of those folks train with their own rifle on their own time.  I wouldn't want to take training time away from an 11-Bravo.

I say this but their are a BAJILLION other gun owners reading this and throwing shade my way right now.  And I half agree with them that I deserve it.  Our side has compromised enough over the years. 

Hey, here's a thought.  Put an expiration date on the purchase age and bumpstocks.  Those parts expire in 2028.  If it's still a good idea in 10 years, they can vote to extend the restrictions.

Bird Flu

CDC worker falls ill, goes home early, vanishes.

I have contacts at the Center for Disease Control.  They tell me the public code phrase for a zombie outbreak is 'Bird Flu'. 

Sorta like when they page Doctor Redbird at the hospital over the intercom.  There is no Doc Redbird.  That just means there is a fire.  "Doctor Redbird, report to the 3rd floor east stairwell, please." and then you see janitors running with fire extinguishers to the 3rd floor.

I asked my contacts if this guy that's missing is a Bird Flu situation.  They are keeping mum about it.

Hand Cannon part deux

Sam Jackson is so... Un-Sam Jackson in this spoof flick.  PACKED full of other stars, too.

But hey, there is one of the few times you see a Wildey Magnum in a movie.

That Assault Weapons Ban of 1994

It was too late, then, to really ban what they called Assault Weapons.  And in fact, they didn't, as we all know.  And all the law did was jack up demand even further, and proliferate ownership by an order of magnitude.

Grandfathered items, an expiration date, no confiscation or turn-ins.

Now, 25 years later, the toothpaste is well and truly out of the tube.

Draconian ban, then, might have had a chance and worked.  AR15s might be as rare as hens teeth and mini-Uzis are today if the gun banners had truly succeeded.  So much so that a n00b like me would not have even missed having them.  I'd have a bolt action hunting rifle and handguns and be fighting over keeping them in the political arena. 

Diane Feinstein had part of a chance back in 1994.  She is truly tilting at windmills now to think a revisited ban is even possible.  There was too many people saying no then for a legislation to be effective, there is certainly too many people now, today, saying no. 

She and her allies are delusional on this.

And that's a good thing.  She has a MUCH bigger task to do infringe on our rights.  She has to spend generations changing the culture. A significant seismic shift, that.

It might have been a mistake to shift from handgun bans to 'assault weapon' bans by the gun controllers back in the 80s.  I think they saw assault weapons as possible, as too many people already had a handgun and were resisting handgun bans.  Their strategy clearly backfired, and now they can get neither.   

Thank you, gunnie culture of 30 years ago for succeeding in this fight.  We are now standing on the foundation you sweated over and toiled on.   With fewer allies on your side you beat back handgun bans then made assault weapon bans untenable.  All pretty much before I could even vote.

They tried to get the easy-ball rolling, going after the GUNS, then ended up losing CONTROL.

You know what would be fun?

Going down to the gun banning marches on the 24th of March and throwing Tide Pods at the feet of the kids Soros, and apparently Gucci, are funding.

"Ooooo, a snack!"

Totally derail their attempts to take away the right of their fellow Americans.

If Ted Cruz ok's it

It might be ok for me.

 The Grassley-Cruz bill.

Tightens up some NICS stuff that our side generally is in favor of.  It promotes actual enforcement of existing laws, like felons that lie on a 4473 under penalty of perjury, &c. Allows interstate firearms sales, which is good for me, but bad for my gun store as I'd buy stuff in other states, like Hatfields in Virginia.  

Ted Cruz may seem a little.... awkward?  Uncharismatic?  But I have a feeling his conservative principles aren't just made of candy floss and marchmelon.  Unlike pretty boy Rubio.  What we need is a Crubio.

Trump

So Trump says:

Ban bump stocks
Make NICS much tighter
Take guns away from all 'crazies'

BOOOOO!!! Say the gunnies, because they know the shenanigans inside that.

Trump says:

Gun Free Zones are like ringing the dinner bell for evil
CCW in schools to protect the kids.


YAYYYY!!! Say the gunnies.  We've been pushing for reforms here for a while.

This dude is hard to nail down, huh?  And people thought he was an AMATEUR policician.

Bill's fault

There were no school shootings until Clinton came along and insisted schools are be Victim-Disarmament Zones, back in 1994.  Or actually 1990?  Dang.  Papa Bush.  Then... school shootings.  You know who else disarmed his future victims?  HITLER!

I guess Clinton just hates school kids.  Or Bush Sr.  Or,Shotgun Joe.  Bill George and Joe.  All Hitlery.  Hitleresque.  Pseudo-Hitlers.  Hitlerish.  WHATEVER.

What?  That argument makes as much sense as anything coming from the left does on this issue.

!

Now give me my rights back.

Why are we contemplating ANY gun control

When what we need is Broward County Sheriff control?

It'd be funny if they hadn't gotten so many people killed. 

I knew it!

Military being deployed for CONFISCATION!

Gross

It's pretty gross the latest gun-grabbing iteration has adopter #NeverAgain as a rallying cry.

You know.  Like they use for the Holocaust.  As if the 2nd Amendment is sorta the same as Nazis and the death camps.  That Trump is Hitler and the NRA is the SS.

Is that why it's gross?  The Godwin?    No. It's gross because the Holocaust only happened because Progressive Democrats in the Weimar 'Republic' disarmed it's people, including the Jews.  So when the Stormtroopers, few in number, came around to roust out folks to ship them off in cattle cars them Nazis knew to be unafraid.  There would be no effective resistance.

If the 1920s Democrats in Germany had defended the people's right like a Republic should then maybe the Holocaust gets strangled in its crib in the mid 1930s.  With effective self-defense.

And you modern Gun Banners are not 1940 Middle Europe Jews.  Stop pretending you are.  That's gross, and an affront to the memory of the actual victims.

Engage the Isolated

Do they also lean left politically?  They seem to.  Am I off base?

By 'they' I mean The Isolated.  The ones we need help out and be friendly with to maybe head off a bit in case they are harboring destructive urges.  People that aren't by nature loners or misanthropes and yet are alone and lonely.  Literally or figuratively.

I don't know as many liberals as I know conservatives, so this is a heavier lift for my political opposite.   Leftist have to engage other leftists. 

If we accept the fact that these mass shooters run predominantly in lefty circles, when they run in circles.

Will DEMOCRATs reach out to folks that might feel isolated and include them?   It's not in their interest.  They use mass shootings to score points and move their political football down the field, just like we gunnies do.  They can alleviate the marginalized in their midst better than us, but then there would be few massacres and they lose a talking point.

Am I just a pessimist curmudgeon with little faith in the Left?  Probably.  But is that evaluation earned?

Rubio

We dodged something with this Rubio guy.  Glad he isn't president.  One little crisis and he collapses under pressure, ready to give it all away to the Democrats.  His name might as well be Marty O'Malley.  Magazine bans, purchasing age hike, bump stocks, and nothing in return.

Course Trump is making cave-in noises as well.  But with Trump... is that what will happen, or is he cagey and triangulating?  Hard to tell until the smoke clears.  With Rubio, I bet what we see is what we'd get. 

What is wrong with LE in Florida?

So, the unarmed football coach rushes to the sound of the guns hoping to save some of his charges.  Dies a hero.

The armed resource officer stays outside.  Later he get's put on administrative leave pending an internal invenstigation.  Rather than wait for the results of that, he has now retired.

Well he went home at the end of the shift.

And for goodness sake, come after me for all that, because I'm the NRA.

So, the FBI doesn't check tips down there.  The Sheriff goes out to the kids house many times.  Once after he threatens folks with a gun they don't take the kid or the gun downtown.  And now this armed guard does nothing.

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"I'm a Republican" No you're not.  How cold IS it in Petrograd, comrade?  You are faker than the Canadian girlfriend I totally lost my virginity to.