Firearm Appreciation 2.0

The Los Angeles Times has photos of Saturday’s gun appreciation day. This one’s my favorite. (What is it with wingnuts and spelling? Oh, maybe the double Ms in “comming” and “ammendment” are for “milimeter.” This might be what passes for “clever” on the fringe.)

In comments, Justme mentioned a 20/20 segment on armed “good guy” citizens and mass shootings. I found the segment, “If I only had a gun,” online. It demonstrates why the would-be heroes probably wouldn’t be all that heroic, or effective.

Our recent troll, Katechon, who alternatively argued that all mass shootings take place in gun-free zones and that armed citizens are more effective at stopping “bad guy” shooters than police (odd, if all those shootings were in “gun-free zones”) is, of course, wrong. Mark Follman at Mother Jones claimed that not one mass shooting over the past 30 years was stopped by an armed “ordinary citizen.” The “gun people” came back with a list of shootings in which, they say, an armed citizen stopped the shooter. But in another article, Mark Follman went through the list and found that (1) the “citizen” actually was a law-enforcement or security professional or member of the military, off duty; or (2) the citizen didn’t stop the shooter while he was shooting, but followed and shot him while he was leaving the scene; or (3) the citizen was pumped full of bullets by the shooter, who was later apprehended by law enforcement.

Way to go, armed citizens!

There’s still a lot we don’t know about yesterday’s tragedy in Albuquerque, so I will withhold comment on that. Let’s just hope the Secret Service is doing its job at today’s inauguration festivities.

21 thoughts on “Firearm Appreciation 2.0

  1. I found this interesting. I hope the link actually goes to a BBC Horizon documentary called “How Mad are You?”. In it a group of ten people is assembled. Five have a history of mental illness and five don’t. A team of psychologists observes them in situation contrived to bring out their conditions. They make a determination as a group.

    This relates to the difficulty of having effective background checks. But, then again, as a layman and not a mental health professional, anyone obsessed with wielding such devastating firepower seems to have fewer marbles than advertised right off the bat.

    http://youtu.be/375-TcKxJpk

  2. So may pasty-white, fat people.

    It looks like the audition line for “The Pillsbury Doughboy.”

  3. “comming [ti]rrany,” I’m guessing.

    Funny, one of my essential definitions of tyranny is a monarch starting a war purely to enrich himself and his noblemen. All those pro-gun protesters must have been in comas since before March 2003. Also might help explain the poor spelling.

  4. What strikes me about your “favorite” photo, aside from the misspelling and the fact that everyone in it is white and mostly male, is that everyone looks angry. It looks like they’re preparing for battle or something. Scary.

  5. It’s like a combination of “amendment” and “ammo.” I’d guess that was the intent, but it doesn’t mean it doesn’t look stupid

  6. OT: interesting to watch a bit of O’s Inaugural II Address without sound (no sound cards at work), because it boils everything down to body language. I sense a hint of Luther the Anger Translator slipping through.

  7. Swami – yowza. Now I know what Donnie and Marie would look like, if they were tanning addicts.

  8. Joan writes:
    “Funny, one of my essential definitions of tyranny is a monarch starting a war purely to enrich himself and his noblemen.”

    Yes, that is very funny, er, but perhaps not the way you meant it. It is also a rather sad commentary on the state of American education in history and world affairs which appears to be nearly as bad as ours!.

  9. What a great Inauguration!
    I cried from the choirs, until after the benediction.
    Kelly and Beyonce were amazing!
    And that speech is sure to explode the heads of a lot of Conservatives and Republicans.

  10. David – “funny” in that context is pure colloquialism. Just a personal habit that I don’t start sentences with “Ironic…” Clearly these people redefining “tiranny,” as they’d spell it, were comatose during the Bush II years.

    And I do sincerely think the pro-gun folks depicted in these photographs are a sad commentary… on many, many things.

  11. I think I’ve figured it out. I kept making the mistake of trying to apply sense and logic to the Second Amendment thumpers, but the “Come and take it” flag with the assault rifle on it put things in perspective. These people say they need assault rifles to defend against government tyranny, right? And the main form of tyranny they’re concerned about appears to be gun control. So they need assault rifles to protect their assault rifles. Is that it?

  12. From the inaugural address:

    The commitments we make to each other through Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security, these things do not sap our initiative, they strengthen us. They do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great.

    Eddie Munster slapdown!

  13. Eddie Munster? Is he the guy who splashes on no-scent scent in preparation for his bow hunting expeditions?..I don’t know what no-scent scent is, but it appears to be an oxymoron to me.. It’s probably a concentrated scent of acorns or decaying leaves, maybe ferns?.. But, I do know that any guy who uses a no-scent scent is well prepared and meticulous to the most minute detail..the knid of guy that you’d want for maybe a… President?

  14. Eddie Munster smells like fake dishwashing photo ops, and “a nation of makers or takers.”

  15. We have a interesting case here in Des Moines involving two 12 yr old boys. One who is learning to walk again after being shot by the other over, what police now believe was a girl. The shooter was removed from his mothers home and is not allowed to return at this time…Here is what I find to be the sad part; The mother and her boyfriend are both charged with a misdemeanor for leaving a gun where someone under the age of 14 had access. Think about this: a kid barely lived and is now having to do the most basic things all over again and will never fully recover and all the gun owners face is a misdemeanor. Sad.

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