Tag: You Can’t Cure Stupid

Arguments for Campus Carry

One movement in the self-defense realm that’s been pushing forward is removing the prohibition several states have on carry a firearm on college campuses. Although the anti-gunners claim this will lead to blood in the classrooms they can show no evidence of that fact while tragedies like the Virginia Tech shooting could have been stopped much sooner had somebody on campus been armed and able to deal with the shooter.

Let’s get back to the anti-gunner’s argument of blood in the classrooms shall we? I think it’s fairly easy for them to support their argument as they only need to point to one incident where legalizing the carrying for firearms on a college campus lead to a shooting. Unfortunately for them they’re going to have a hard time demonstrating that:

In response to claims that allowing guns on campus would result in a less safe learning environment, SCCC notes there is yet to be a single reported incident at the more 70 campuses that already allow concealed carry by licensed individuals.

Herein lies the problem with arguments against expanding right to carry laws. Ever since this discussion has bubbled to the surface the anti-gunners have been claiming that expanded carry laws will lead to blood in the streets but as of yet they can’t actually point to any number of instances where this has occurred. It must really stick in their craws that the device they irrationally fear isn’t actually dangerous in of itself. I know it will come as a shocker to those arguing against the right to bear arms but the only way a gun is dangerous is if it’s in the hands of a bad person and bad people will ignore any laws restricting their possession of firearms.

If you look at the history of major shootings in the United States a large majority happen in so-called “gun-free zones.” The cowards who perform these heinous crimes are cowards who fear somebody stopping them before they’re able to kill a desired number of people. When presented with resistance most of these cowards end up saving us the effort by killing themselves. Allowing legally armed individuals to carry their firearms on campus would remove another “gun-free zone” from the books and likely lower the chances of shootings occurring there. What it hasn’t lead to are shootings on college campuses (just ask Utah who allow campus carry but haven’t had to deal with any mass shootings on college campuses).

By That Standard

You’re never going to believe this but I went to the Red Star website and found more cannon fodder. Let’s take a look at a letter to the editor submitted by Gary Thompson of St. Paul:

The following label should be printed on all concealed-carry handgun purchases.

“WARNING: According to government statistics, the possession and carrying of this hand-held firearm will greatly multiply your chances of being shot by a spouse, other family member, acquaintance, neighbor, intruder, or even yourself. According to the Surgeon General, the consumption of even small amounts of alcohol or drugs by any of these persons, as in operating any machinery, will further multiply these chances.”

If a label can be put on cigarettes, one should be put on handguns.

By that standard the following warning label should be applied to automobiles:

“WARNING: According to government statistics, the possession and use of this automobile will greatly multiply your chances of getting into an automobile accident.”

The following warning should be applied to electrified households:

“WARNING: According to government statistics, the possession and use of this electrified house will greatly multiple your chances of getting electrocuted.”

How about households with running water:

“WARNING: According to government statistics, the possession and use of this household will greatly multiply your chances of drowning.”

I could go on and one with this but I think my point has been made; the absence of something will decrease any affect that thing can have on you. With that said your chances of getting assaulted, murdered, or raped by some thug is multiplied by the absence of a means of self-defense.

How’s That Pricing Fixing Working For You

Cuba being a communist nation has a fixed economic system. Part of a fixed economic system involved fixing prices at certain levels which are usually absurdly skewed from what the free-market value is. What happens when the price of a good is fixed so low that money is lost on that item? Simple, the price must either be raised of the quality must be lowered. Cuba has decided to go with the latter and have reinstated the mixing of peas in coffee:

Cuba is resuming mixing coffee with roasted peas in a bid to cope with rising international coffee prices, the authorities say.

The blend for domestic consumption will help cut costs, given that coffee prices had risen some 69% over the last year, the announcement said.

Coffee mixed with peas isn’t exactly something that tastes all that great:

The measures mean that the authorities will be able to continue distributing coffee with the subsidised price fixed at at 4 pesos (17 US cents) for a 115g (4oz) bag, the statement said.
Workers handles sacks of coffee imported from Brazil Imports of coffee help to meet local demand

Cubans, who tend to drink small cups of highly sweetened coffee, are used to pea-blended coffee.

“It’s much, much more bitter than pure coffee, which is smoother,” Havana resident Froilan Valido told AP news agency.

This is the inevitable end to a planned economy. It’s impossible to actually plan an economy due to the extremely large number of factors that determine the value of a consumer good. Since coffee harvests have been poor in Cuba the commodity is rarer which raises the price. Harvest amounts aren’t fixed and can be affected by everything from weather to disease. This combined with countless other factors means any economic plan is likely to fail as such events can’t be predicted with any amount of regularity.

Of course this action will lead to higher pea consumption which will make the product rarer and thus increase it’s market value. Thus this action won’t bring the price of coffee down for any meaningful amount of time because the price of peas will have to go up with increased demand. This is akin to corn subsidies in the United States which involves much of produced corn being consumed in producing ethanol fuel which drives the price of corn up. Thus a food product becomes more expensive.

More Products From the Bad Ideas Department

There are bad ideas, really bad ideas, and epically bad ideas. Having an umbrella that looks like a firearm is hovering somewhere between the latter two. It seems like nothing but trouble could be had from having an umbrella in the shape of a firearm but as Every Day, No Days Off points out one company decided this bad idea needed to be implemented.

I often wonder how some products get past the lawyer department.

Mexico is Suing American Gun Manufacturers

It appears as though Mexico hasn’t gotten the memo about the United States government smuggling guns into their country and instead opting to attempt lawsuits against American gun manufacturers. That probably makes a little bit of sense since the United States government isn’t going to allow itself to get sued but as the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) points out Mexico still doesn’t have a case:

The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the trade association for the firearms industry, respects the work of President Calderon to willingly take on his country’s powerful drug cartels; however, we are disappointed that he would seek to hold law-abiding American companies responsible for crime in Mexico. This is especially troubling given investigative reports that show more than 80 percent of the firearms recovered in Mexico do not come from the United States. The most recent of these reports, from the independent research group STRATFOR, determined that less than 12 percent of the guns Mexico seized in 2008 came from the United States.

Furthermore, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), firearms traced in Mexico were originally sold at retail not recently, but, on average, 14 years earlier. This is completely inconsistent with any notion that a flood of newly purchased firearms are being illegally smuggled over the border. And let’s not forget that no retail firearm sale can be made in the U.S. until after an FBI criminal background check of the purchaser has been completed.

Have fun wasting money you don’t have Mexico. Maybe you should spend that money on fixing your failing state instead. Then again Mexico probably has just as likely a chance of accomplishing that as successfully suing American gun manufacturers so the point is really moot.

Apparently Women Shouldn’t Be Getting Into Shooting Sports

Sometimes I forget that there are still people in this world who believe a woman’s place is in the kitchen. Bitter over at Snowflakes in Hell pointed out an idiotic column:

I’m not trying to trigger trepidation among firearm enthusiasts.

Yeah he is.

The industry is unlikely to successfully tap that market until it conquers the pesky preconceived notions that likely turn off many females to the idea of gun ownership. Women likely won’t consider packing pistols if they are concerned that:

— Spending several hundred dollars on a serviceable handgun might leave them without enough money to get the full treatment at that next visit to the day spa.

— Carrying a gun in a small purse would leave less room for more important items, such as lipstick or compact.

— The baggy clothing required to successfully conceal most holsters would make them appear frumpy.

— Gunpowder residue might stain the new Karen Scott blouse they just bought at Macy’s.

— The gunpowder smell when the weapon is fired could totally overwhelm the Chanel they’re wearing.

— Most firearm accessories come only in one boring color: black.

— Target practice earplugs simply aren’t sexy.

It’s strange because none of this seems to have been a problem for the several female shooters I know. I guess the author, Mr. Heyl, believes women would just be happier if they stayed in the kitchen and made him his sandwiches.

I’m going to have to have a conversation with the women I know who enjoy shooting and tell them apparently they made the wrong choice in life.

The Gun Industry Seems to be Doing Well

Regardless of what Josh Sugarman if the Violence Policy Center claim it appears as though gun companies are doing well. As Sebastian points out Smith and Wesson may appear to not be doing so well but it isn’t due to firearms:

Now to be fair, it wasn’t Smith & Wesson’s firearms division that misfired. In fact, revenue from the company’s primary division climbed to $79.2 million from $74.7 million a year earlier. The drag on Smith came from its perimeter security division, which saw a 38% drop in revenue as businesses and the government spent less on its perimeter security systems.

Oh and Ruger appears to be pretty happy as well:

In the case of Sturm Ruger, makers of the Ruger brand pistols, rifles and shotguns, the company has hit the earnings bullseye. In February, it posted fourth-quarter earnings of 30 cents a share on strong sales of $64.1 million. Both top- and bottom-line numbers bested Wall Street expectations.

And here Josh Sugarman promised all this anti-gunner buddies that the firearms industry was failing.

In Lieu of Doing Something

The economy is in the toilet, the government has fucked the market so hard through laws and regulations that the chances of it recovering grow slimmer with each passing day, and unemployment keeps rising due to businesses failing. If you’re an unemployment agency what can you do? Obviously you can’t make jobs, only private industry can do that (I’m referring to actual jobs that create wealth). What would be the next best thing? How about giving $14,000 worth of capes to the unemployed:

Workforce Central Florida spent more than $14,000 on the red capes as part of its “Cape-A-Bility Challenge” public relations campaign. The campaign featured a cartoon character, “Dr. Evil Unemployment,” who needs to be vanquished.

That’s much easier than actually doing something.

What Do You Do When You’re Organization Is Shown to Be Ineffective

Let’s say you’re the head of an organization that has shown to be completely ineffective in its mission. You ineffectiveness has been demonstrated so often that you can no longer hide it and now donations from believers in your cause are drying up. What is one last desperate maneuver you can make in the hopes of staving off death? Well, if You’re the Brady Campaign you claim the President is passing super secret gun control laws:

During the meeting, President Obama dropped in and, according to Sarah Brady, brought up the issue of gun control, “to fill us in that it was very much on his agenda,” she said.

“I just want you to know that we are working on it,” Brady recalled the president telling them. “We have to go through a few processes, but under the radar.”

This could be an effective strategy to drum up money because it makes it appear as though the Brady Campaign has influence with the President and the results of this influence will go unnoticed but will accomplish a desired goal. Basically this strategy would allow the Brady Campaign to make up success. Instead of having to point at newly passed laws to demonstrate success the Brady Campaign could use changing Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (ATF) regulations as “under the radar” gun control measures influenced by none other than the Brady Campaign. This isn’t as hard to do either as the ATF is rather schizophrenic about their regulations and like to change them on a whim without actually telling anybody.

Unfortunately for them pro-gun people keep a constant eye on them and call their organization out when they try to make idiotic maneuvers like this. Sorry Sarah Brady but we caught this little attempt to appear relevant.

This May Comes As a Shock

The BBC has an article about the movement here in the United States to enact laws allowing people with legally recognized ability to carry a firearm to do so on college campuses. Like most issues involving guns you have those who are for the right of the people to carry and thus defend themselves and then you have the side that is wrong. The article interviews David Burnett, the president of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, as well as some Brady Campaign shill show should know better. What interested me was the following quote by the Brady Campaign shill (literally in this case):

“You think you know what you would do. But, honestly, you will lose your mind if you are involved in something like that.”

Colin took four bullets from the Virginia Tech shooter back in 2007. “One above my left knee,” he explained, “in both my hips, and through my right shoulder.”

Colin was a defenseless victim of the Virgina Tech shooter and still advocates that he and every other student remain defenseless. If I believed he had malicious intent instead of just being stupid I’d almost think he believed that everybody else should get shot because he was shot.

The fact of the matter is had somebody at Virginia Tech had access to a firearm they could have stopped that scumbag shooter before he murdered those 10 people in Colin’s French class.

“These people are afraid. I totally understand that. I was there. But their fear is misdirected.

“If that idea (that carrying a gun makes you safer) was true, we’d already be the safest place in the world.

This is a false type of logic. What Colin just implied was because A implies B and B implies C then A implies C. I can point out that there has been no case of liberalized (using the classical definition of liberal) carry laws leading to an increase in violent crime. On the other hand I can point to states such as Florida where liberalized carry laws were following immediately by a lowering of the violent crime rate. Thus it can be said that liberalized carry laws imply either lower or no change in violent crime rates but not an increase in violent crime rates. The implication is not causality though as there could be any number of other factors that lead to the lower violent crime rates. What can be stated though is liberalized carry laws do not cause higher violent crime rates.

The other mistake Colin makes is trying to imply liberalized carry laws are for the safety of society. I’ve already explained how liberalized carry laws don’t lead to an increase in violent crime but these laws also aren’t meant to benefit all of society but to benefit individuals. Liberalized carry laws allow individuals to carry a means of defending themselves. This individual benefit, like most individual benefits, can end up positively effecting society as a whole but the basis of this benefit is to help individual people.

Since everybody isn’t carrying a gun liberalized carry laws don’t make all of society safer. Since I carry a gun liberalized carry laws have made me safer though. This increase in my safety has lead to no negative impact to the safety and quality of life of other people around me. Thus the law has a net positive effect as in benefits somebody and doesn’t negatively impact anybody (besides the criminals who are trying to negatively impact individuals of course).

Due to these statements I put forth the fact that anti-gunners like Colin have absolutely no leg to stand one.