Daily Digest: Are We Not Men?

1. 20 feet and paper? With a freaking AR? I’ve fired 30 rounds through one and only watched YouTube videos for training, and that sounds pretty easy.

   In real life, different, but hopefully someone in that position has fired more than 30 rounds and had training beyond watching random vids online.

   • Like he said above the target is hiding behind a non-combatant, nothing like making the term meat shield come true. Unlike the movies though you get the bad guy, but too bad for the innocent the bullet passed through to get there.

     • Yes, but he’s getting worried over paper. I flat out would not want to try something like that in real life, period, but certain not with the (lack of) skill I have now, but paper?

       I also haven’t read of a DGU yet that involved this often discusses situation.

       • This is why people around here suggest home carry, to make sure the bad guy is flat on his a$$ and doesn’t get to a family member to use as a hostage! unfortunately where do you see hostage situations? GUN FREE ZONES! Banks, recently a school bus, historically post offices etc…

   • Yea, we did this exact same shoot with pistols at TDI in a live fire house. Obviously it wasn’t the same pressure as the real McCoy, but hitting the t-zone at 20 feet doesn’t require mad Delta Force skillz. Just cus he couldn’t do it doesn’t mean the rest of us couldn’t.

2. [reposted from an earlier thread, becuase it’s also relevant here]

   > “I think that you can’t start to pick apart anything
   > out of the Bill of Rights without thinking that it’s all
   > going to become undone,” Willis told The Associated
   > Press. ”If you take one out or change one law, then
   > why wouldn’t they take all your rights away from you?”

   If there’s anybody who has the ability and resources to do this, here’s an idea for a very short film based on Bruce’s quote:

   Show the Bill of Rights printed on a tapestry.

   Somebody says something like, “We need to do something about gun violence”, and starts pulling loose threads from the Second Amendment.

   As they keep pulling threads, the entire tapestry comes undone and falls to pieces.

   Or something like that. Hopefully I explained it well enough so you get the idea.

   The Willis quote is great, but I think a short video illustrating his point would get the message across to a wider audience.

   • If you are an NRA member they should be contacting you to do the next commercial, good idea

   • > the next commercial, good idea

     Thanks. The more I think about it (and visualize it in my mind), the more I really like the idea.

     Alas, the traditional pro-gun organizations which do have the resources to produce such a video won’t do it, simply because they lack vision and the ability to think outside their comfort zone. And if they did, they’d probably screw it up anyway.

     Here’s another idea:

     There’s an old variation of Martin Niemöller’s “First They Came…” that goes something like this:

     When they came for the eighth amendment,
     I was silent because I had never been convicted of a crime.

     When they came for the seventh amendment,
     I didn’t say anything because I had never sued anybody.

     When hey came for the sixth amendment,
     I did not protest because I had never been arrested.

     When they came for the fifth amendment,
     I was silent because I wasn’t a drug dealer.

     When they came for the fourth amendment,
     I did not speak out, because I had nothing to hide.

     When they came for the second amendment,
     I said nothing because I didn’t own a gun.

     And then they came for the first amendment,
     and I could say nothing at all.

     A lot of us have probably seen some version of this before.

     However, a TV spot with pro-gun celebrities like Bruce Willis, Tom Selleck, Angelina Jolie, David Mamet, etc. — either one reading the entire thing, or each reading one line — could have a significant impact on the “undecideds” and “mushy middle”.

     But again, I don’t think any of the traditional organizations with the necessary resources will ever do it, because they are too comfortable doing what they’ve been doing for decades.

     • Swiped and Facebooked. Thanks!

3. I think after what Bruce Willis said all of us should see his 2-3 movies he made in way to say thanks for some common sense from a actor.

   • I had no interest in “A Good Day to Die Hard” until today. Opening day, baby!

     • Yippee Cay-Yah Mother Russia!

       I’ve always loved Bruce – he really is the everyman’s action hero. Balding (now bald), a little heavy around the middle, usually bleeding, and definitely disheveled – and he still gets the job done with a smirk.

     • > I’ve always loved Bruce – he really is the
       > everyman’s action hero.

       In other words, an Action Survivor more than an Action Hero:

       Not all protagonists are Hollywood Action Heroes; powerful, grizzled and tough. Some are decidedly less… action-y. One of these is the Action Survivor, who is very much a normal guy in abnormal circumstances. He won’t so much get The Call as be pinned by a telephone pole,

       although John McClane had traits of both:

       John McClane, from Die Hard, was initially an Action Survivor Action Hero. In fact, the movie became an instant classic largely because of the contrast between McClane and the ubermensch Action Hero characters of Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and a million B-movie “stars”. Not to say that McClane isn’t a certifiable badass, but in the first movie, he’s pretty much an ordinary cop thrust into extraordinary circumstances, and he spends much of the film bleeding and swearing at his ill fortune in having been caught up in the plot.

       His sidekicks in each movie, none of whom wanted to get involved, are more traditional Action Survivors. Officer Al Powell was picking up Twinkies, Zeus Carver was just looking after his electronics shop, and the Justin Long guy was a dweeby hacker.

4. Although not related to any topic of this Daily Digest, here’s a graph I made a few weeks ago comparing homicide rates in prison to the general U.S. population

   homicide_prison_v_population_1758x0902.jpg ( 1,758 x 902 pixels)

   that you might find interesting.

   What will it take to make us as safe as inmates in prison?

   The sources for the data I used are:

   Mortality in Local Jails and State Prisons, 2000-2010 – Statistical Tables
   Margaret E. Noonan
   December 13, 2012 NCJ 239911
   see Table 3 on p. 6 and Table 14 on p. 14

   and

   Suicide and Homicide in State Prisons and Local Jails
   Christopher J. Mumola
   August 21, 2005 NCJ 210036
   see tables on p. 2

   The graph is also available in smaller resolutions —
   homicide_prison_v_population_1000x0513.jpg 1,000 x 513 pixels and
   homicide_prison_v_population_0800x0410.jpg 800 x 410 pixels
   — if you need a smaller-size copy for some reason.

5. One thing I can’t get over is the left knee jerk reflex of the totalitarian wannabes to blame you, me, the NRA, and every gun owner for what 3 or 4 insane people did. One thing the Left will always lack is a sense of proportion. Three crazy or wicked people commit an atrocity, and their solution is to punish the 300 million others who did nothing wrong. Which is maybe itself form of insanity. Are we too far gone to punish mass murderers instead? Hang them from the highest lamppost on Main Street and maybe their copycats will stop thinking it’s sexy.

   • Kind of difficult to hang them considering that almost all the recent spree killings ended with suicide.

     • I think it would be much easier to hang them if they weren’t all kicking and squirmy.

   • > Kind of difficult to hang them considering that almost
     > all the recent spree killings ended with suicide.

     But their bodies can be publicly defiled.

     * Pose them in embarassing pictures with goats.
     * Publicly feed them to the hogs.
     * Impale their bodies on a giant dildo.
     * Make sure the phrase “a small penis” is frequently used often to describe them.
     * Stuff their bodies, dress them up in feminine clothing and makeup, and auction the bodies off to eccentric collectors to compensate the victims. This has the added bonus of finding out who is sick enough to buy the body.

     etc. etc.

     It’s been a long time since I’ve read Dean Ing’s Soft Targets (1979), but if I remember it correctly, the media agreed to savagely ridicule the terrorists instead of portraying them as supervillians to be feared.

   • I think that some of these people have concluded, rationally, that incidents like this are not predictable or preventable through usual police methods–and that makes them afraid. Their only solution is to ban all guns in the belief that this will prevent it from happening to them.

   • It isn’t insanity. It’s taking advantage of a crisis to push a long cherished agenda.

6. If politicians were so sure that “gun control” laws would save children’s lives, why did they wait until 20 of them died?

   If they’re so concerned about “saving just one life”, why did they wait until 20 died when they already had the answer long before?

   • It’s simple; they’re pandering to the masses. They know that since, despite high levels of gun ownership, most Americans – especially those in concentrated urban areas – are unfamiliar to guns and thing of them as scary, alien objects. So, when something like Sandy Hook happens guns are naturally the scapegoat. Blame the guns, pander to the masses. If anything Democrats have perfected the art of public appearance. While most folks probably think of the GOP as close-minded, intolerant, Bible-hugging OFWGs, and third parties are simply considered “throwaway votes,” the Democratic party makes sure to appeal to the masses.

     • It’s politics, Obama is not able to follow through on the platforms of his campaign, so now its time to save face and show the world how “good” his side is, safe world with no guns, acceptance of gay marriage, it’s mostly just smoke and mirrors and bringing up hidden agendas.

7. That WaPo column was worth a chuckle.

   Read the bit about Obama’s shotgun and the other about his hostage scenario experiment.

   It’s the same logic that announces guns are useless for defense because the author doesn’t trust themselves so nobody else can be, or if a someone is ever killed while carrying a gun of their own, or that an armed defender in a school is pointless “because Columbine”.

   • this part!?:

     “You want to see a dangerous-looking gun, look at the one President Obama was photographed skeet shooting with at Camp David last summer. That shotgun of his was big enough to take down a woolly mammoth. When I pulled the trigger on the AR-15, one high-powered round came out. Maybe I hit something; maybe I didn’t. Obama can’t miss. He could clear a room with one double-barreled blast.”

     • And how hostage rescue is the opposite of what an armed teacher would do. If there are hostages there’s time, and (love em or hate em) time means SWAT. If the “hostage” is really a human shield while the perp keeps blasting away your options are do something or curl up into a ball and cross your fingers.

       • If it’s spree shooting, isn’t immediate, armed response by anyone available what’s called for, even if it’s a teacher?

       • Thanks, Wyatt. I didn’t mean to say an armed teacher would curl up in a ball, but that storming a room throwing flashbangs and taking headshots (hostage rescue/SWAT) isn’t what were talking about. We’re talking about immediate response to immediate threats, and if a kid gets winged (or worse) by a good bullet as the bad guy goes down, saving the lives of two or twenty others in the mean time it was worth the risk.

         Highly reported cases like the MAERSK ALABAMA where our SEALs performed perfectly has programed too many of us to think only tip-of-the-spear demigods can save us, but that only works when they have time to get there. If there were 20 more hostages on that lifeboat and the skinny’s started shooting before the SEALs landed you can bet your ass some 18 year hick from the engine room would have been put on the fantail with an M16 and he would have done a damn better job than waiting around.

       • The social sciences stopped being relevant when they thought they could find a school of thought superior to utilitarianism.

8. Its pretty hard to push death when you have a group of people that aren’t going along with the program, that would be us. A decent human being is supposed to die when an armed robber wants to kill him. We are Martians to the bradys. Some think we are literally playing cowboys & indians. They are captives in their Stockholm Syndrome world & afraid to stick their head out of it. They are also jealous, why should we live when they die? All is not lost, they have a self that is very much in tune with us, just gotta dig it out, Randy

9. I feel sorry for people who don’t “get” guns.
   well this is basically the definition of someone who does not “get” guns.
   -“CM – You are NRA brain-washed. Anything with a clip can be fired quickly and re-clipped in no time; this is what allows for killing a lot of people with semi-automatics.”
   I copied and pasted that from a washington post comment.

10. **fatigued from the fight**

    Need some release – a little range time maybe. Even in the cold weather I could have some fun… oh wait, there’s not a grains worth of ammo to be had still.

    Grr – back to writing letters and emails to politicians that don’t listen I guess.

11. Owning a gun is an act of violence? Not quite…but at least leftists, as is their wont, are misinterpreting something real. Owning a gun isn’t evil, but it is a political act all on its own. Owning an “assault weapon,” especially, is a political act. Even those of us who don’t do all that much shooting, and are way too old to have Rambo-like fantasies (and, incidentally, are perfectly satisfied with their natural endowments), can send a powerful message to gun grabbers simply by buying, and keeping, an evil black rifle. Vote with steel.

    • “Vote with steel” – I like it!

      When simple possession of an inanimate object is deemed a political act and condemned as an “act of violence” by the powers that be, then we’re on the road to fascism. The current debate has nothing whatsoever to do with public safety & everything to do with class warfare and the regime has decided that gun owners are the class enemy.

      “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”

    • “Vote with steel”
      Roger ^that. I never expected to buy an AR-15, having been perfectly happy with my AK-47. But I now have a stripped receiver on order for this very reason.

      • Don’t tell anyone, but it looks like lower parts kits and complete uppers are starting to trickle back into the supply chain. Hell, you can buy complete high-end AR uppers today if you’re willing to pay for the top-grade stuff (cough*Noveske*cough)…

        Ammo, on the other hand, is a different story.

12. Wasn’t there an article on a laser gun system with a mechanical recoil impersonating thingy on here or around the net somewhere recently? Did I just dream that because of how badly I want to practice in my living room?

    • Don’t think I saw on here, but the Modern Pentathlon (yes, the once best test of a calvary officer’s chops) uses laser pistols with an air pulse to simulate the recoil of a pellet gun.
      http://www.wired.com/playbook/2012/08/modern-pentathlon-laser-pistols/

13. Bruce Willis is catching some hell for it, but I’m damn glad he said something. I didn’t really have much desire to see the next Die Hard, but I’m going to now.

    I need to stop reading the comment sections of these links, though. When this is all said and done, and the self appointed vox populi move on to the next thing- gay cub scouts?- they’ll smile and bobble-head and forget about their “passionate crusade to end gun violence.”
    And they’ll give me that bewildered “WTF?” face when I tell them to FOAD, next time they come around thinking we’re buddies.

    • And when this fever breaks, most of the mess will be gone for a while. But they’ll leave a few more firearms laws behind, like diarrhea spatters on a bathroom wall. An incremental taint on what should, and in a sane world would, be a nation of free people.

      To live a moral life, we have keep fighting tyranny as vigorously as we can. However, I’m starting to think the current generation is probably lost. Talk to the kids in your life. Teach them formal logic. Teach them about what happens in societies in which the individual is devalued. Our kids may have thick layers of sh*t to scrape off the walls, but they may have better luck if we give them the tools and perspectives we didn’t (and they won’t) learn in public schools.

14. We are Devo!

    • I was going to be sorely disappointed if nobody stepped up and completed the refrain.

15. I’m sick of anti rights people and their weak, facile arguments. Being defenseless is contemptible. Having effeminate fascists in expensive suits tell me that I have to get their permission before owning a weapon or telling me how many rounds I can fire per pull of the trigger is contemptible. It’s disgusting. I just wish that enough people cared. It makes me depressed that so many people are indifferent to their enslavement. The gun issue is just one area. The pasture that we’re “allowed” to feed in is getting smaller and smaller. And not enough people care. Besides, “the game’s on”

    • Effeminate is not the insult you think it is. Especially since many effeminate people carry guns proudly and fight for the 2nd amendment.

      Otherwise, good post.

16. We are men, we face reality and all the bull that comes with it. We decided to be patriots and uphold our 2nd amendment, the same thing that has kept us safe in the face of a multitude of threats. If history has taught us anything its that hugging your enemy and asking him about his feelings gets you killed. The same things they hate are the same things keeping them from being unable to say they hate it. Let them live in a bubble were everything bad goes away because they closed their eyes, like sheep. They blame us for shootings, they blame us for not stopping the shootings, they mock us for offering solutions for the shootings. As long as people are dim enough to believe everything the (liberal) media tells them this will never end. We have to hear it but their just screwing themselves.

17. I’ve been thinking about all these videos and pictures we all make and post.
    So many of us are stone-faced. Serious. (I’ll be the first to cop a guilty plea to that offense).
    It’s a serious subject.
    But, maybe there is something to be learned from Larry Potterfield over at Midway USA. So, he’s not admonishing politicians not to tread on the second amendment and he’s not brandishing an AR or admiring a Barrett…. but he’s always smiling and friendly.
    And maybe those of us who make videos should take a cue from Larry and understand that to break the ice, bridge the gap and bring those on the fence to our side and those opposed to us a bit closer, we should try some warmth.

    • +1. I like the pictures where people are smiling, or at least look relaxed, compared to those who present an intense, challenging gaze.

18. Screw this gotcha. It is not that I have anything to say more than anybody else, but this gotcha is a waste of time when it deletes comment over a wrong letter. And it has been ineffectual for the most part in most applications. Live free while you can.

19. I don’t know why you keep associating gun ownership with “freedom” and gun control with “collectivists/communists/statists/fascists/tyranny.”

    I am an unapologetic communist and statist. We oppose the tyranny of the rich which your hillbilly pro-capitalist views tolerate. It is you who are allowing fascism (which is right wing xenophobia-fuelled corporate government) to exist.

    Communists understand guns just fine. We made many of them. The AK-47 liberated much of the world from capitalist oppression. The AR-15 is a symbol of that oppression.

    This has more to do with your pathetic right wing crusade than a gun. The only evil is the capitalist and the capitalist supporter 🙂

    • Perhaps our guest should ask the 20 million or so who Lenin starved to death in the Ukraine during the 30’s how liberated THEY feel?

      Oh, wait…He can’t, can he?

    • Oh geez, it’s Faux Commie again. Folks, ol’ GLG is one of us, and he’s playing a practical joke to make us think he’s not. Imitating communist boilerplate & sounding like a CPUSA mouthpiece is simply too easy.

      Only….I recommend you drop the term `statist’. That word never has a favorable connotation & anyway it’s redundant next to `communist’.

      You weren’t really cheering during “Red Dawn” when the Soviets were committing mass murder, were you? I didn’t think so. So work on your technique & send something similar to Daily Kos and see if they bite.

      Farewell, “comrade”

    • Yes Comrade, your great Communist society murdered 100 million plus people and never achieved the standard of living that Nazi Germany had in the Summer of 1939. The Nazis only killed 12 million people. Much better deal unless you were a Jew. Hitler never would never have run up the score that high had Stalin not signed an alliance with him.

    • Others have called this guy out appropriately in other ways, but one important correction.

      The rightmost end of the political continuum isn’t fascism. The rightmost end of the continuum is anarchy (which doesn’t work very well in practice, just like communism doesn’t work in practice).

      The continuum from communism on the left to fascism on the right is a contrived (and patently unrealistic) model. Part of the swill that most of us were fed in public schools.

      Hitler for instance was very much on the same side the scale as the USSR. The NAZIs were national socialists. The people were allowed to keep very little of what they produced (very high taxes), that state controlled most aspects of life, the lives of many individuals were devalued, the elite ruled with an iron fist. Many differences, yes, but very much like the USSR in most practical ways.

      The idea that the far right is fascist, and that Republicans are closer to that end of the scale than are Democrats, is a turd the socialists who control our public education system dropped in our collective punchbowl long ago. The idea assumes that we will be slaves to one government or another. That may be a natural perspective for people raised in areas of the world that have never been free, but it’s a fundamentally anti-American idea.

      That’s why I always laugh at lefties who call Republicans fascists. Money is real power. Force of arms is real power. “So, let me get this straight, Skippy. The party that is, by and large, more in favor of individuals keeping more of what they earn and keeping their right to own effective weapons are fascists?”

      Now, if someone says Republicans are closer to fascists than are Libertarians, then I’m with them all the way.

      • Anarchism is NOT the far right. Since it believes NO power is legitimately derived via force, its correct place is OUTSIDE the left/right paradigm. Anarchists believe in reduced government interference too; they just believe the correct amount is ultimately NONE.

        While I’m philosophically an anarchist, I am quite happy within the framework of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, should anyone decide to apply them correctly.

    • Ghost, didn’t you say that you and your partner owned a successfull bookstore? So how do you balance being a good commie and a successfull capitalist?

      • Maybe it’s a successful FREE bookstore?

        Really, folks. GLG is pulling your legs. Hard.

20. From nj.com article, “About a third believe ease of access to firearms is the main cause of gun violence”, This statement must be from people who have never tried to legally purchase in this state. It convoluted gun laws make it difficult.
    Read for yourself:
    http://www.state.nj.us/njsp/info/pdf/firearms/njac-title13-ch54.pdf
    For those video inclined:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fC2iu3CTPc&feature=player_detailpage

21. Wave a Thermold, insert a Troy mag. A man after my own heart. I’m keeping my Thermolds, et al, but my Troy is always inside my Bushmaster.

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