okay, I’m a gun owning Woman. I don’t need this kind of writing by someone who seems out-of-the-loop because you don’t connect to the issue of gun. Yes, I was raised in the West. I own guns because I’ve always liked guns and appreciated the protection a gun offers a trained Gun Owner, period. My children were trained to be comfortable with guns, because I didn’t want them to be ignorant victims if they should be exposed to Bad Gun Shit.
I use a 22 pistol to dispatch my meat chickens humanely. I have a 12 gauge shotgun for coyotes and predators. Guns are tools or guns are a glorified…. my guns are tools.
No human needs an assault rifle unless they’re planning on killing humans.
And that’s a big problem.

Imagine how much better the Audi 2013 Big Game commercial Prom would have been with a handgun.

“Hey, son. Have fun tonight.”

Bubble gum pink, huh? Wonder if they’ll come with peace signs on them soon….in neon colors of course, with maybe a little flocking to tickle delicate hands.

Ummm, this post isn’t about guns but guns that look like toys. The firearm in question was pink. It’s also about an IDIOT mother who left it laying around and it’s about a STUPID law that limits lawsuits when gun manufacturers do ABSURD shit like manufacturing firearms that look like toys. But hey, why read the post and follow the links when you can clutch your pearls and act all outraged and shit? Why not just blame Obama for allowing George W Bush to sign that bill into law?

Yeah this definitely evokes disgust.

Good luck with that, because thanks to Congress, you may be able to sue a manufacturer of a washing machine that shorts out, but you cannot sue a gun manufacture for making a gun look like a transformer.

That would be because this would be like suing a car company for drunk driving deaths. How the hell do you invoke product liability when someone is “moronic enough not to keep them in a safe place”? You might as well start trying to sue home appliance manufacturers when kids get burned by hot stoves because their guardians were too stupid to tell them not to touch the burners.

If you were serious about cutting down on tragedies like this, you know what you’d do? You’d stop wasting time trying to imply inanimate objects have malign intent (which gives more fuel to the screamers in the NRA, galvanizes opposition quickly and has resulted in literally MILLIONS of firearms panic-purchased by idiots who probably see safe firearm storage as an affront to god) and instead focus on MANDATORY safety courses and MANDATORY safe storage laws, you know, the shit the NRA claims to be for that you can then hold their feet to the fire on.

Or you can imply that all gun owners are inherently sick and mentally disordered, keep up the mantra that “all guns are evil machines designed to kill children and puppies” and push for laws that have no hope in hell of passing. Then you can say you did it “for the children of Sandy Hook” and pat yourselves on the back for getting up in the NRA’s face. Because that’s working out real well so far.

No human needs an assault rifle unless they’re planning on killing humans.
And that’s a big problem.

Yeah openhope, except for the fact that those firearms are used in a ridiculously small percentage of crimes. You know what’s used a lot more by people who kill humans? Handguns like yours. Only thing I plan on using my “assault weapon” for is punching holes in paper, but I can’t even do that right now because the damn panicky idiots riled up by all this bloviating from the mainstream Left about “murder machines” have stripped the shelves bare of ammo for almost anything.

The approach to this issue has been appalling. It’s been an order of stupid along the lines of telling someone who’s about to hang themselves that if they don’t get down off that chair this instant you’re going to kick it out from under them. All the emphasis has been on confrontation and emotionalism instead of facts. At this point I’m waiting for anti-choice style ads with photos of dead kids and claims of an American holocaust perpetrated by gun owners and the NRA. You’re wasting a perfect opportunity to take the piss out of the NRA and make them put up or shut up on gun safety in favor of being a bunch of crusaders out for glory, taking on the evil gun machines without compromise. What you don’t seem to get is that all this hard-charging nonsense is exactly what people like Wayne LaPierre have been waiting and hoping for. They’ve been predicting a push against gun ownership and you’re giving it to them. They’ve been talking about how the people on the side of firearms regulation don’t know the first thing about guns and every time someone lapses into hyperbolic nonsense about how firearms with pistol grips and heat shields turn average people into unstoppable killers, you prove them right. You prove that you don’t know anything about the subject except that you hate them and you want them gone no matter what it takes. Sound familiar? It should. It’s the kind of stuff folks on the Left usually oppose.

Good morning, pups. This morning it’s Friedman flying solo since MoDo is off today. The Moustache of Wisdom is in New Delhi, and has questions. In “India vs. China vs. Egypt” he asks which one will thrive the most in the 21st century? The race is on. More typical stuff from him.

Here he is, and

here’s Krugman’s blog.

The coffee, tea and hot chocolate are ready, and I’ve got a variety of bagels with cream cheese this morning. I’m in no mood to hang around with a couple of hysterics who choose to intentionally misunderstand what the issues surrounding rational gun laws are. Have a grand day, y’all.

That would be because this would be like suing a car company for drunk driving deaths

No it’s not. It’s because Congress passed a law in 2005 that specifically limits lawsuits of gun manufacturers for doing stupid shit like making them look like toys. You’re as bad as openhope. READ the post and follow the links and you’ll see that you didn’t need to drag out the fainting couch after all!

I increasingly feel like I’m wasting my time on this blog.

A terminal sickness at that !

I’ve come to realize half the people are packing where I’m working without no stinking permit from da gubernment. there’s not a single one i would trust in a shoot out though they always talk an A game.

Once you pack a powder keg with 300 million guns and trillions of rounds out here, we’re happy to throw another 3 year old on the gun altar no sympathy for the 7 year old sister who will live with the horror forever either .

Here in Ohio, we’ve actually got a law that toy guns must look like toys. Normally bright colors (dunno about pink), with bright yellow or red plastic plugs in the barrel. This after a kid got shot because a cop thought the toy gun was real.

It never would have occurred to me we’d need a law saying real guns must look like real guns.

Boxturtle (Ted Nugent with a pink AR15. There’s a mental image!)

Pro-gun people like to divert the conservation to gun safety, but the past few weeks have made it abundantly clear that “gun safety” is an oxymoron.

I cite the people who got shot during “Gun Appreciation Day” as proof. Thank you, pro-gunners, for making the case for cracking down on guns.

You can make a washing machine safe, and it won’t kill anyone. But since a gun is specifically designed to kill, it can’t be safe unless it’s not working. Ergo, the only real “gun safety” is no guns.

http://youtu.be/u9mw80FhMtg

Thanks, attaturk, I hadn’t realized the gun lobby had made it hard to keep gun manufacturers from being held to account for irresponsible products. I remember when deaths resulted from medicines made to taste like candy, so kids were sneaking them and overdosing. It seems like a reasonable approach that safety be a factor in making a product that can kill.

Thanks, Marion, wondering if ‘thrive’ is defined as producing more money or as enabling satisfying lives? Well, no, there’s no wondering involved, Friedman has no idea there might be factors bigger than $$.

There are 60 to 70 million gun owners in the U.S., and there are more than 300,000 in prison for crimes committed using guns.

That means one out of every 200 to 250 people who own guns have committed and been convicted of a crime using a gun.

Not to mention all the people who’ve committed crimes using a gun who got away with it.

Not to mention all the people who’ve been accidentally shot.

Not to mention all the people who’ve been able to commit suicide using a gun.

When the NRA says it’s a problem keeping guns out of the hands of the .0001% of gun owners who are bad guys, I’ve got to assume all those people got their guns on loan from the gun library.

Must be hellacious overdue fines.

and why the nra meme about enforcing existing laws is totall bullshit. because behind their crony congresscritters doors, they’re killing the sensible laws that are on the books and strangling funding for enforcement.

because NRA really means Nutty Radical Anarchists these days. and all those “good” members own this, too, with their memberships.

The NRA has deserted its function as a lobby, and has devolved into a survivalist business operation.
Maybe requiring that the purchase of any gun of any sort include the signing of an agreement to support the survivors of anyone you happen to kill or maim for their lifetimes?

No it’s not. It’s because Congress passed a law in 2005 that specifically limits lawsuits of gun manufacturers for doing stupid shit like making them look like toys. You’re as bad as openhope. READ the post and follow the links and you’ll see that you didn’t need to drag out the fainting couch after all!

Um, no, it doesn’t. Your mistake is in assuming I’m not familiar with the limitations you’re talking about. It limits people from filing lawsuits against firearms manufacturers for injuries or deaths resulting from illegal or improper use. Period. It doesn’t stop people from filing suit regarding injuries or deaths resulting from manufacturing defects (you know, like a washing machine shorting out). It doesn’t say “Neener neener, we can do what we want and you can’t stop us”. It says you can’t bring bullshit lawsuits against firearms manufacturers when the cause of injury or death was the negligence or ill intent of the owner or operator of that firearm. The only reason it ended up on the books in the first place is because someone got the brilliant idea that they could try and use wrongful injury and death lawsuits to bankrupt or cripple the firearms industry and it backfired.

It backfired because it was stupid, transparent and ridiculously unsupportable by almost any legal precedent. It might as well have been preceeded by an announcement that said “We’re not as concerned with people being accidentally killed by guns are we are in putting you fuckers out of business by any means necessary.”.

It’s more of this inexplicable fetish to label inanimate objects as inherently evil instead of doing something smart like pushing for mandatory safety training and safe storage laws. Which would, oh I don’t know, maybe stop this from happening so much with guns that aren’t frickin’ pink, like’s been happening for decades before now. But it becomes more and more evident that the longer this debate goes on that most folks on the side of bans and restrictions aren’t interested in safety or preventing violence as much as they are with winning and with making the other side look like a collection of bloodthirsty monsters.

And what has it accomplished? The crazies like LaPierre and Nugent are enjoying increased credibility with their base, millions of those dreaded “assault weapons” and “high capacity magazines” have been sold in the past few months, the new proposed Assault Weapons Ban was history before it even made it to a vote and with it will go any possibility of federal-level legislation regarding safety or licensing. All because the visceral need to “do something” was greater than the thought put into what needed to be done and what could be done.

Like I said, this is the kind of rhetoric the Right usually employs. It’s failing them. It’s failing them because information is more readily available to people these days and they can see for themselves that abortions don’t cause cancer and LGBT folks aren’t all disease-ridden pervs. They can also see that the Virginia Tech shooter didn’t use an “assault rifle” and had mostly 10-round magazines but still managed to rack up the worst casualty toll of any school shooting before or since. They can see that the Aurora shooter’s 100-round AR magazine jammed on him after three or four shots and was discarded. They can see testimony from police firearms examiners that state the ludicrously small number of “assault weapons” actually used in crimes. So when you start hyperventilating about “murder machines” and how “assault weapons” are only good for killing large numbers of people and need to be banned right now, a few minutes’ worth of research makes you look like liars. When you go past that and broadcast far and wide that all gun owners are sick racist paranoid cowards who hate children and want them to die, well, then it’s hard to tell the difference between you and some guy outside a clinic screaming that all the women going in there are sluts and whores. And at the end of the day, tragedies like this are still going to happen because the self-righteous cause matters more than the results.

Only thing I plan on using my “assault weapon” for is punching holes in paper, but I can’t even do that right now because the damn panicky idiots riled up by all this bloviating from the mainstream Left about “murder machines” have stripped the shelves bare of ammo for almost anything.

You only plan on using your assault weapon (grammar lesson–no need to use scare quotes for the actual name of something) to punch holes in paper, but you feel that hobby is more important than anyone trying to restrict the ownership of these weapons, even when some people are obviously using these weapons for their intended purpose of punching holes in people? Your hobby is more important to you than even a single innocent life saved because these assault weapons were kept out of the hands of a potential murderer? A hobby?

Well, the rest of us don’t feel like endorsing your right to a paper-punching hobby with the blood of our friends and families. Find another hobby, please.

(and BTW–offering as evidence that the “Left” is emotionally overreacting to a non-problem by claiming that “panicky idiots” are stockpiling ammunition is counter to your argument. Panicked idiots stockpiling assault weapons and ammo after a public massacre of innocents is pretty much evidence of mass hysteria, not rational gun-ownership. You might want to clean your thinking machine.)

Greenville, South Carolina? Where was Greenville’s savior, George Tierney, Jr., when they needed him?

Pro-gun people like to divert the conservation to gun safety, but the past few weeks have made it abundantly clear that “gun safety” is an oxymoron.

I cite the people who got shot during “Gun Appreciation Day” as proof. Thank you, pro-gunners, for making the case for cracking down on guns.

Yeah, five people shot at gun shows with thousands and thousands in attendance. That’s some solid proof there.

You can make a washing machine safe, and it won’t kill anyone. But since a gun is specifically designed to kill, it can’t be safe unless it’s not working. Ergo, the only real “gun safety” is no guns.

Brilliant. Except for the hundreds of millions of gun owners who’ve never killed anyone and the hundreds of millions of guns that’ve never so much as injured someone, let alone killed someone. So yeah, let’s focus on getting several hundred million guns out of circulation because that’s the only “real” gun safety. Pushing for mandatory safety, licensing and training requirements is obviously just a pipe dream that could never ever become real and anyone suggesting it is just an NRA shill because only NRA members own guns amirite?

something smart like pushing for mandatory safety training and safe storage laws

There’s the rub ain’t it .Gun nutz live on the edge that edge, that being the wild west standard the quick draw and the nutz ain’t allowing trigger locks, lock boxes or chips that read your fingerprints or what ever. That’s the line drawn instantaneous reaction to any threat and we’re damn lucky they allow us safety’s on the murder machines.

Having them be pink likely makes for more gentle family violence….nothing
like building in appeal to children and any others who are lacking in
“capacity.”

Tragedies are going to happen because folks trying to stop them didn’t get it all right? Try again. Limiting gun access to nutcases is a step in the right direction, and certainly isn’t instigating further gun murders.

Yeah, five people shot at gun shows with thousands and thousands in attendance. That’s some solid proof there.

There you have it, gun nuttery . It was six people ,solid people but with gun nutz there always a few throw aways even if it’s a fellow gun nutz. So what’s the number you need for SOLID evidence 10, 100, 1000, 31,000+

By the way thousands upon thousands of people used their washing machine this past weekend do you think any 6 of them suffered the kind of injuries that the gun nutz suffered ?

Your hobby is more important to you than even a single innocent life saved because these assault weapons were kept out of the hands of a potential murderer? A hobby?

Ah yes, the old “you think your hobby is more important than ALL THE DEAD CHILDREN” bit. Along with the free grammar and condescension lesson, how original.

So, how does this “If it’s necessary to save one life” thing work out when it’s someone talking about torture? Drone strikes? Warrantless surveilance? No-knock warrants? It’s the same ticking time bomb argument the Right resorts to and it doesn’t suddenly start being just and decent when you’re using it for something you want.

Well, the rest of us don’t feel like endorsing your right to a paper-punching hobby with the blood of our friends and families. Find another hobby, please.

And some folks like me don’t feel like endorsing your privileged pacifism with feel-good solutions that have all ready been proven to not have any noticeable effect on violent crime because of your fear of events that are as statistically probable as being killed by a lightning strike.

(and BTW–offering as evidence that the “Left” is emotionally overreacting to a non-problem by claiming that “panicky idiots” are stockpiling ammunition is counter to your argument. Panicked idiots stockpiling assault weapons and ammo after a public massacre of innocents is pretty much evidence of mass hysteria, not rational gun-ownership. You might want to clean your thinking machine.)

Their reaction in stockpiling as they are is being driven partly by the rhetoric of the NRA and confirmed by the rhetoric of those who wish to ban all firearms of a specific type just because a handful of people out of millions used them to harm others. Hence my earlier analogy of trying to stop someone from hanging themselves by threatening to kick the chair out from under them. It’s making the problem worse, not better, because now there are probably a hundred times more of these firearms in circulation and in the hands of people for whom any kind of safe or rational ownership is not even a tertiary concern. My thinking machine tells me this is probably not the best situation and encouraging it by ramping up the kind of rhetoric that caused them to panic buy in the first place is probably a pretty godsdamn stupid idea as well. Left on its own, the panic buying would have died out like it did right after Obama’s inauguration, but then the new AWB proposal appeared and everybody started talking about magazine bans and the panic buying cranked right back up again. Hard for the Chicken Littles to run out of steam when pieces of sky keep falling on their widdle heads. Let me spell it out for you: You’re making the problem worse because you’re so convinced you’re right you won’t stop attacking people who all ready felt they were being attacked but previously had nothing to back up that persecution complex. Now you’ve given them concrete proof that you do indeed want all of their guns made illegal and you expect them to, what, say “Okay, you got us, we’ll just go along with it.”? The desire to bloody the NRA’s nose has overridden common sense and rationality.

Apparently the stockpiling is based in evidence; heard it on the news.
Folks worried about doing without.

Tragedies are going to happen because folks trying to stop them didn’t get it all right? Try again. Limiting gun access to nutcases is a step in the right direction, and certainly isn’t instigating further gun murders.

No, tragedies are going to keep happening because the purity of the cause is more important than anything else. “Limiting gun access to nutcases” would not have stopped this child from being killed. A $45 key lock safe required by law would have.

How would you enforce that $ 45 key lock law ?

How would you enforce that law ?

You know I could be a smartass and ask how you’d enforce a ban on rifles or magazines, but I won’t. Instead I’ll just say we’d enforce it the same way they enforce it in Germany, Norway, Finland, Switzerland, etc.. The storage has to be inspected yearly (I’d prefer monthly) with stiff penalties and loss of firearms ownership for noncompliance. Yeah, you’re going to have the spittle-sprayers who are going to scream about how we’re infringing on their right to have an AR under their pillow but they’re going to be a lot easier to marginalize than they are when you’re talking about banning this and that.

And the response to children dying because of guns is to arrest other children for having toy guns in the wrong place.

What a country!

The Right would attribute that to “political correctness gone mad” or some other such crap. What it is is good old fashioned zero-tolerance cover-your-ass policy on the part of the school. Same kind of thing that had them hauling kids out of class for wearing black or doodling guns after Columbine. Makes them look like they’re doing something without actually doing something and lets them flex their muscles against the marginalized.

So a post about a real tragedy involving a gun with a non-conventional appearance – “that looked like a toy” – is illustrated by a vid about toy guns?

Is this where we start marketing scented gun oil? /s

I was just going to comment on that.

The above video is an airsoft gun, which shoots 6mm plastic rounds weighing a quarter of a gram or less at only 300-400 feet per second.

To be fair, though, my wife owns one of these, which is a real gun.

To be fair, though, my wife owns one of these, which is a real gun.

Okay normally I’m kinda “meh” about SIGs, but that color combination looks pretty sharp.