Thursday, January 03, 2013

Gun Goofiness

Since the tragic shootings at Sandy Hook, there have been the predictable idiotic knee-jerk responses from those politicians and Hollywood notables who continue to show they don't know jack.  To not "know jack", of course, is an abbreviated version of the actual phrase I'd normally use, but I'm trying to eliminate profanity from my speech, both vocalized and printed.  Wish me luck on that.  But the term means that one's understanding of an issue is so devoid of fact and knowledge that one is rendered unworthy of the privilege of offering an opinion.  One who does not know jack is so ignorant of even the basics of the issue at hand that it provokes in those who do know jack great wonder that one would dare broach the subject.  I myself have been accused on occasion of not knowing jack by certain visitors to this blog.  But these visitors do not demonstrate a better knowledge of jack in their inability to show where my description of jack is in error.  To them it is just something they say when their own limited understanding of jack, if they possess any at all, does not prove compelling or even accurate.

But I digress.  This is about particular people who don't know jack and their insignificant proposals for dealing with gun violence in our culture.  Before I get to the main point I wanted to relate here, I have to mention something I heard today on the radio whilst working another unnecessarily long day (another digression).  Michael Medved did a quick spot on the subject of dishonest leftist stats (are there any other kind?) regarding gun deaths.  In it, and I grant that I've taken no time to research this particular bit, he states that in their relentless pursuit of a defenseless population, the left likes to speak of gun deaths which include suicides.  His point is that suicides from self-inflicted gunshot distorts the picture of gun violence, or more accurately, crimes committed with guns.  If such suicides are removed from the equation, and added to gun suicides all other forms of suicide, the total would overwhelm the amount of murders by gunshot.  Again, I did not research this stat myself.  I doubt that Medved made it up, and he is known for being pretty good with stats.  In any case, it does represent another case of the left doing anything they can to push their agenda.

Getting back to those with the jerking knees, I want to touch on the issue of large capacity magazines.  They come up in the discussion because the gun-grabbers ask, "Why would anyone need large capacity clips?"  It so happens that a good article explaining why was found at the incredibly biased, poorly written and therefor obviously unworthy of serious consideration by progressives AmericanThinker.com.  In fact, the article is co-incidentally entitled,  "Why Does Anybody Need A 30-round Magazine?" Check it out.

Before reading this article, I had already pondered the question and came up with the obvious answer, "Because there might be lots of bad guys."  And the article addresses that.  But it also speaks of how many rounds it might take to stop a single attacker as well.  The stories related in the article are compelling examples of how the anti-gun goofs spend little time truly thinking about an issue before they spew their nonsensical solutions.  One must wonder why that is as it happens with incredible regularity.  It lends credence to my opinion that those who vote for leftist candidates don't know jack, since they routinely vote for candidates that don't know jack, either.

The same, of course, can be said about the notion of "assault weapons".  I could assault you with a can of cling peaches in heavy syrup and that would make that can of peaches an assault weapon.  The term is purposely vague and requires stupid people to react primarily on an emotional level upon hearing it that they respond affirmatively to the leftist politician's impotent legislative proposal to ban them.  It's been tried and there was not discernible effect.  Now, Sen. Diane Feinstein, who doesn't know jack any better than any other leftist politician or celebrity, what's to bring the ban back.

Then, as if that wasn't enough, some will alter the term to "military style weapons".  And no doubt, we can't have people owning automatic weapons, now can we?  They're only for killing, by golly!  Such calls completely ignore the fact that the 2nd Amendment was intended to keep the federal government on notice.

Some are worried about the thought that people are walking around with guns or in possession of certain types of guns in their homes.  We should be far more worried about politicians who want to restrict our right to protect ourselves by arming ourselves.  I know I am definitely worried about people continuing to elect people who would exploit tragedies and play on the emotions those tragedies inflame.  It's not about guns.  It's never been about guns, or knives or bows and arrows or weapons of any kind.