Month: December 2010

Be Prepared… To Be Underwhelmed

Says Uncle let it be known that Glock is apparently going to be holding an hour long press conference at the SHOT Show. What will they talk about? Well this will spark a ton of talk about the fabled Glock carbine again but I’m betting they’re just going to talk about the Gen4 pistols and their success.

Glock is a rather boring company (not a bad thing, so long as their pistols keep working I like boring) and rarely seem to announced anything too spectacular. I’m betting this presentation will be rather underwhelming.

Tron: Legacy

I saw Tron: Legacy at the IMAX on Saturday. To sum up the movie I can say it kicks major amounts of ass. Even if you haven’t seen the first film there is a lot to like in the new movie. It kicks all sorts of ass and frankly you really just need to go watch it. Legacy does a great job of having throwbacks to the original movie without being reliant on the nostalgia factor.

Oh and apparently the movie is in 3D. Being a man without any depth perception I wouldn’t have known this except for the fact that if I didn’t wear the glasses they gave us I the movie would be really blurry.

Mexican Gun Canard Strikes Again

The Washington Post has yet another article about all the evil scary guns being trafficked across the United States border into Mexico. The problem is the problem, it’s not really what they claim it is:

To back up its assertion that the U.S. is the source of most of Mexico’s guns (“statistics . . . show that 80 to 90 percent of the weapons seized in Mexico are first sold in the United States”), the Post cites the claim that “Federal authorities say that more than 60,000 U.S. guns of all types have been recovered in Mexico in the past four years.” This is a wild exaggeration. The Post is referring to an oft-cited U.S. Government Accountability Office study which shows that, of the guns seized in Mexico and given to the ATF for tracing from 2004 through 2008, approximately 87 percent originated in the U.S.

But this number says nothing about the percentage of guns seized in Mexico that originated in the U.S., because the U.S. does not trace – because they are not of U.S. origin, and so are not submitted by Mexican authorities to the U.S. for tracing – the majority of guns seized in Mexico. According to the GAO, the number of guns seized in Mexico that have been traced back to the U.S. has ranged from 5,260 in 2005 to 1,950 in 2006 to 3,060 in 2007 to 6,700 in 2008. That is a total of about 17,000, nowhere close to 60,000.

Oh, I’m sorry did your bullshit get discredited again Mr. Anti-Gunner? We in the gun rights community seem to be making a habit of that. Then again if you didn’t lie you’d have no leg to stand on so I guess I see why you’re doing it (It’s because you’re assholes isn’t it?).

United Nations Looking to Regulation the Internet

The United Nations motto is, “There isn’t a human right we’ve seen that we like.” They multi-government organization loves to claim they are for human rights and then quickly turn around and regulated those rights away from the citizenry of the world. After the Wikileaks fallout they are now looking at regulating the Internet:

At a meeting in New York on Wednesday, representatives from Brazil called for an international body made up of Government representatives that would to attempt to create global standards for policing the internet – specifically in reaction to challenges such as WikiLeaks.

That would be great, an inter-government body in charge of regulating the largest bastion of free speech in the world. What could go wrong? I mean it’s not like this is the same organization that put leaders of the Middle East in charge of womens’ rights or anything… oh wait they did (a representative from Saudi Arabia was seated). This is also the same organization that believes owning guns is a right only for governments and their thugs. I can’t wait to see what ideas they come up with for Internet regulations, I’m sure it’ll be very pro-government and very anti-peasanthuman rights.

Rule Four, Learn it and Use it

Being sure of your target before shooting it is the fourth rule of firearm safety. It seems some police officers aren’t away of that rule as they shot and killed a man who was spraying his garden with a hose:

A father shot dead by two police officers had pointed a pistol-style garden hose at them and not a gun, the department chief admitted yesterday.

The police are claiming he aimed it at them in a two handed posture:

They opened fire on him when he pointed the black metal-tipped object at them in a two-handed posture, Long Island Police Chief Jim McDonnell said in an emotional news conference marked by sobs from the victim’s relatives.

You know what? I don’t buy it. What I would believe is the officers coming up behind the guy, yelling at him to drop the gun, and the man with the hose turning around in surprise with the garden sprayer aimed in their direction. Likewise seeing the long green hose coming off of the nozzle in addition to the guy being in a fucking garden should have been a good indicator that maybe he was holding a garden hose.

The family is taking legal action. Of course the only thing they’ll be winning is tax money so basically they would be looking to get a tax refund in exchange for the death of their family member.

But They’ll Just Take Your Gun and Shoot You

The anti-gunners parrot it again and again, “If you carry a gun an attacker will just take it and use it against you.” They refuse to understand that such an event is rare and scenarios such as this are far more likely:

As they were trying to tie up the store owner, the 52-year-old took out a handgun from his waistband and fatally shot one of the suspects, Smith said. The store owner then grabbed a shotgun and shot and killed the two other suspects in the ensuring gunbattle, Smith said.

Well one man successfully defending his store from three thugs usually isn’t that common, the store owner was obviously exceptionally high on the awesome scale. What is more common are stories of people successfully using firearms to defend themselves than stories about criminals who taking somebody’s gun and shoot them with it.

A Slight Overreaction

The police in Australia must be bored because they seem to be looking for excuses to deploy their helicopters. A thief stole a woman’s iPhone from a hospital, the woman used the Find My Phone app to track the whereabouts of the phone, and the police went into action with a fucking helicopter.

Let’s do some quite math here for a second. The price of the top of the line iPhone 4 in Australia is $999.00 plus any additional taxes. The cost of flying a helicopter is a complex formula which adds up to being a lot fucking more than an iPhone. If the police wanted to do something while saving the tax payers money they could have just purchased the victim a new phone and called it a day.

I’m Glad They’re Working on the State Budget

While Minnesota is facing a $6.2 billion deficit it seems at least one representative is looking to introduce a bill that would build a subsidized stadium for our state football team:

Three days after the collapse of the Metrodome roof, Sen. Julie Rosen, a Republican from Fairmont, said she planned to introduce a bill in late January to build a new Minnesota Vikings stadium with public subsidies.

According to the laws of physics as we understand them the fasting speed anything can travel is the speed of light. What modern physicist haven’t studied is the speed at which the state of Minnesota hemorrhages money because it’s faster than the speed of light by a long shot. Even though Minnesota is bleeding money several state representatives are willing to diverge state money to build a stadium for millionaires… again (fuck you Twins and your stadium which I’m paying for part of).

I guess we’ll just have to jack up the sales tax in Hennepin county again so those worthless fucks can have a new stadium (because as we know patching that easily patchable roof would be so fucking difficult).

Revisionist History

Raise your hand if you’re a fan of revisionist history. OK, those with their hands raised get the fuck off of my site. I have a friend who’s political orientation I would best describe as Democrat. I don’t mean to say he’s liberal or “progressive” but a Democrat. Everything the party says is correct and if he disagrees with it he performs endless mental gymnastics until he “understands” why he was wrong and the Democrat Party was right. Needless to say a red flag was raised upon reading the following statement by him:

The Republicans are clearly on the wrong side of history over the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell just like there were during the Civil Rights Act of 1964…

It was an interesting statement to say the least as the second part is completely false. My response was as follows:

[Name Removed] I usually don’t question your knowledge of history dealing with the civil rights movement but I think we need to have some clarification from you:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964#Vote_totals

The Civil Rights Act vote breakdown shows far more Republicans (by percentage as there were fewer of them in the legislature at the time compared to the Democrats) voted for the bill than Democrats.

Likewise the filibuster was done by a Democrat.

If you’re going to make claims that the Republicans were on the wrong side of that bill you should clarify what you mean by that. Because as I see it a larger percentage of the Republican party supported the bill.

Of course he never posted a counter argument as there isn’t one and he couldn’t admit that his beloved party did something reprehensible to him. When you look at the vote breakdown of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 you find the Republican party (in both houses) had about 80% of their people voting in favor of the bill while the Democrats only had roughly 60%. I’m not trying to make a statement on the quality of our political parties (as a libertarian I support neither party) but on the fact people like to craft history to their needs.

When you get into an argument with somebody it makes sense to have Google at hand to fact check their statements. People love to lie and sometimes they really don’t know that they’re lying (in other words somebody told them something and they couldn’t be bothered to do a fucking fact check).

Likewise watch out for people who try to revise history. A classic example of revisionist history is the idea that Abraham Lincoln went into the Civil War to free the slaves. That’s completely false as Lincoln stated several times he didn’t care whether or not the slaves were freed, he wanted to preserve the union (an easy read on the subject would be Lincoln Unmasked). A more recent example would be statements made by Supreme Court Justice Beyer on the Second Amendment.

Allowing revisionist history to go unchallenged does nothing positive and destroys any lessons that could have been learned from the actual events that unfolded.

Magic Gun Barrier Fails Again

I honestly don’t believe this story because it’s so impossible. It seem a man was able to get a gun into a school. That’s impossible though as schools have the magical gun-free zone barrier surrounding them that prevents all firearms from entering the grounds.

This news ends well in that nobody of consequence was killed or even injured:

The gunman opened fire at Husfelt and school board members. He missed them all, even though he was at close range, said Lee Stafford, director of student services of Bay District Schools. Duke said, “I’m going to kill [unintelligible],” while he fired.

Mike Jones, chief of security for the school system and a retired police officer, exchanged fire with Duke, who was wounded and rolled to the ground. Duke turned his gun on himself, dying of a fatal gunshot to the head, authorities said. Husfelt called Jones a “hero.”

It’s a good thing he was a really bad shot or didn’t want to kill anybody (I don’t care which it is, it’s just good news). It’s interesting to know that another person was able to get a firearm through the school’s magic gun barrier, I think they need to hire a better wizard.

If you look at the pictures on the site Mr. Crazy drew a crude ‘V’ with a circle around it:

But a Facebook page belonging to a Clay Duke has a profile photo of a “V” in a red circle, a logo that is used in the movie “V for Vendetta.”

According to the Internet Movie Database, the 2006 film is about “a shadowy freedom fighter known only as “V” uses terrorist tactics to fight against his totalitarian society. Upon rescuing a girl from the secret police, he also finds his best chance at having an ally.”

I’m glad CNN latched onto the V for Vendetta thing as that same symbol is often used by my friends who advocate voluntarism (and they’re smart people who don’t need CNN trying to demonize their entire movement). Either way crazy is crazy but in this case nobody important was hurt so it’s the best ending you can hope fore.