#DumpStarWars Distracts from ‘Rogue One’ Citizen Militia Theme – “’I haven’t yet seen ‘Rogue One,’ but we all know the basics of the story: A band of rebels fighting for freedom against a militaristic, tyrannical empire,’ U.S. News Managing Editor Robert Schlesinger asserts. ‘You know what? The idea that freedom is better than tyranny is profoundly political. If you doubt it, I’d be happy to direct you to a few places on this planet where you can learn the lesson the unpleasant way.’ Only a smug know-it-all who has not even seen what he’s writing about would presume to correct the CEO of Disney, the company that made the film.” And Schlesinger is more than up to the task.

Exonerated Man Sues New Jersey After 3 Years in Prison for BB Gun – “A New Jersey man cleared of a conviction that landed him in prison for three years over a BB gun is suing the state for damages, which could pay out upwards of $150,000. The wrongful conviction lawsuit was filed on Dec. 14 in Middlesex County Superior Court after the state appellate court ruled the case against 30-year-old hinged on warrantless search.” Wonder if he has a GoFundMe page.

Stores in these parts sure seemed busy. Still are, in fact.

Social Security Administration Publishes Final Rule Relating to NICS Improvement Amendments Act of 2007 – “A number of individuals commented that ‘these rules would violate the affected individuals’ rights under the Second Amendment to the Constitution, and would also violate their equal protection rights under the Constitution. Most of these comments were provided in largely identical letters, and they asserted that our rules would take firearms away from elderly recipients of Social Security retirement benefits.'”

NPR analysis . . . In 2016, Violence Pervaded Policing On Both Ends Of The Gun – “Deadly encounters between police and civilians often made 2016 a year full of palpable tension. Across the country, demonstrators took to the streets to protest police shootings, while at the same time officers in a number of states were targeted and killed by gunmen. Both situations have prompted law enforcement to examine use-of-force policies.”

And… More African Americans Look To Purchase Guns – “Paul Oliver, the owner of Oliver Arms in Spartanburg, South Carolina, is having a very good year. Business is up and customers are happy. ‘We prefer it to be more of a normal steady pattern of sales and that’s what we’ve experienced before and after the election,’ Oliver said. Oliver saw a slight bounce in sales after the November election. He also saw his minority clientele increase as several of those customers signed up for his concealed weapons permit classes.” Come on in…plenty of room for everyone.

Police: Gun store owner shoots, kills armed robber – “A gun store owner shot and killed a man attempting to rob his store Monday morning, according to police. The owner of Dixie Gun and Pawn on Veterans Memorial Parkway in Cobb County, along with one other worker, had just opened the store when two men with ski masks and guns came in, according to investigators. Police say the owner pulled out his gun and fired, hitting one of the gunmen.” Pro tip: don’t rob a gun store when the owner is present.

 

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77 COMMENTS

  2. 3 years in prison for a f###ing BB gun. I’d want MORE than money. RIP Carrie Fisher-hall of fame for Star Wars &Blues Brothers gun mayhem?

    • “RIP Carrie Fisher”

      Yeah, that news sucked.

      She was my second teenage crush.

      Farrah Fawcett was the first. (What can I say? That poster!!!)

  3. I hope that the cesspool of NJ pays lots. I lived there during the 1980s, when they (as now) imposed draconian and arbitrary standards and enforcement on law abiding gun owners, while, meanwhile, you had to stay out of certain urban areas to avoid a hail of lead, you could buy any firearm of your imagining within a short time on the black market at bars in the right (wrong) neighborhoods, and while the crooked cronies of certain politicians and certain crooked law enforcement (note, I am NOT saying that all L.E. are crooked, but NJ has had more than a few) had whatever firepower they cared to possess and brag about. I had a friend whose college roommate was the son of a crooked cop and that son sold drugs and weapons that his dad skimmed out of evidence. Again, I am not saying that all or even most L.E. are corrupt, but nothing breeds corruption like asymmetrical power. Being in and exiting that cesspool is what rendered me permanently militant about the Second Amendment.

  4. It is impossible for sales to be down 300%. I doubt the owner really said that, I think the reporter probably did.

      • Maybe, like the F hole “PROGRESS” MEANS COMMUNISM” in regard to taxes, it’s not a true minus 300%, but a reduction in the projected increase in sales.

        Prez Ohole said progress again today at Pearl.

        F all the evil (D) and your progeny.

    • Because Maths is hard! I noticed that immediately. Do you suppose he is losing $24,000 per day? (based on a $12,000 day)

  5. And it seems that universal background check legislation has been pre-filed in New Mexico, by representatives from Espanola and Los Alamos.

    Unfortunately, in contrast to the national averages, NM’s legislature turned a bit more Democrat, and that party will hold a majority going into the next legislative session. Here’s hoping we can hold back the damage.

    • Will need to talk to the in-laws about that. Especially since work asked if I’d consider moving to NM. Thanks for the heads up.

      • Not to despair yet. New Mexico is one of the gun-friendliest places I’ve ever lived … and come to love. The fight to keep it that way is well worth it.

        I think both we and the antis are using the camel’s nose theory here.

        We need to be clear: Bad camel! Out of the tent!

    • That’s disappointing. For a number of reasons, such as dark skies for astronomy, Silver City might have been a good place to retire.

    • Indeed. I live close enough to Santa Fe that I should be able to make some of the public comment sessions, when and if.

    • Yeah. Due to the Graves Act, which was passed by pols saying “it’ll give us the tools we need to take down gang bangers”, possession of a firearm is a mandatory 3 years in prison. And NJ’s definition in this case includes BB/airsoft guns.

      Prior to this, the prosecution had to prove that it was going to be used in a crime. But our genius politicians don’t think that mens rea should be part of a felony conviction, apparently.

  7. Good trigger discipline by the gentlemen with the shotguns. Looks like at least two are active law enforcement. I’d be glad to have them on my side in a gunfight.

  8. For the record, I saw Rogue One today and I have to say, it’s possibly the best Star Wars movie since Return of the Jedi in 1983.

    • Rogue is much better than Return of the Jedi. What is not in Rogue? Cute little bears in the forest. A princess in a bikini. Obi one as a ghost.

      • If I remember correctly, the bikini was only in The Empire Strikes Back. No matter, I enjoyed the view.

        • Yup. The bikini we’re thinking of was in Return of the Jedi. Thank you, Carrie Fisher: you helped trigger my young endocrine system into puberty that year, I’ll never forget you. RIP.

    • I enjoyed the first three (by release date) Star Wars movies. The rest have been disappointing. The Force Awakens, which contains the death of Han Solo at the hands of his and Leia’s son, could have been great. Instead, it was mindless noise.

      I’ll borrow Rogue One when my public library gets it on DVD.

      • I was so hoping JarJar was going to wind up being the Sith Lord training Han and Leaia’s son. ‘Meesa findsa your lack of faithsa, disturbing.’

        Now, get THAT out of your ears. Muahaha.

    • Agreed. I was very pleasantly surprised at how well the movie sucked me in and made me root for the good guys. Or should I say heroes.

    • My wife developed a theory during the pre Rogue One Star Wars-a-thon on TV: the fall of the Republic was Yoda’s fault.

      Consider: Count Dookoo was Yoda’s Padawan. Look at his life choices: left the Order, became evil. Obi-Wan was part of Yoda’s master-to-Padawan “lineage” … and look what happened with his Padawan: left the Order, became evil. Yoda also had a hand in training Luke … who apparently just ran off and left things to rot sometime after RotJ. And finally, Yoda was a leading member of the Council that utterly failed to detect and counter Darth Sidious.

      All coincidence? Not, I think!

    • never saw any of them. i’d probably really enjoy the good ones, but at this point it’s a personal badge of honor. i enjoyed watching the lucas museum go packing.
      seen anything out of new zealand lately?

  9. There are a lot of pro-gun and pro-liberty messages in popular culture if you know where to look.

    A couple examples:

    – early in the first Hunger Games novel, Katniss goes hunting and retrieves her bow and arrows from a hiding spot. She reflects on the superior craftsmanship her father put into it and how he could have made a good living as an arrowsmith. However:

    … if the officials found out he would have been publicly executed for inciting a rebellion. Most of the Peacekeepers turn a blind eye to the few of us who hunt because they’re as hungry for fresh meat as anybody is. In fact, they’re among our best customers. But the idea that someone might be arming the Seam would never have been allowed.

    – in the later Harry Potter novels, when Voldemort finally takes over, two things immediately happen. First, Defense Against the Dark Arts is banned as a subject for instruction at Hogwarts. Second, wands, which along with being the foremost tool for general magic, are also the primary tools for self-defense, are confiscated from “undesirables”. The analogy is pretty obvious, I would think.

    I don’t think that either Suzanne Collins or J. K. Rowling is remotely pro-gun, but the messages are still there. The fact is, a lot of these works sound a message that is counter to the creator’s personal politics, because individual freedom and self-determination is much more inspiring than being a victim.

  13. Sales are down 300%?
    So, for example, if he was selling 100 guns a week, now he’s unselling 200 guns a week? That’s a lot of returns/refunds!!

    Oops, Button beat me to it.

  14. I found the most intriguing scene in R1 to be the council meeting. You had so many asserting that they must surrender or otherwise give up hope because the Death Star is such an overwhelming technological terror. Yet, they fought anyway. And, eventually, they succeeded.

    It reminded me of every discussion I’ve had wherein someone tells me that taking on the US military would be a fool’s errand since they have such a technical advantage, regardless of the lessons of 1776, Vietnam, and Afghanistan. Maybe this will reach them a little better (except for the “I don’t watch mainstream movies” crowd).

    • The lesson of 1776, Viet Nam and Afghanistan is that, if you aren’t determined to win, you won’t.

      The Revolution was a proxy war between England and France. The British didn’t believe the territory that became the United States was worth an all out effort to retain.

      Lyndon Johnson’s interest was domestic policy. He had no interest in fighting in Vietnam but didn’t dare abandon the place to the communists. He tried to negotiate with the North Vietnamese, as if they were his opposition in Congress, rather than fight to win. Ho Chi Minh was focused on victory and refused to play Johnson’s game.

      In Afghanistan, Bush pretty much snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. The war was won in a few weeks by providing close air support for the Northern Alliance. Then, Bush pretty much abandoned the place instead of strengthening the new government through foreign aid. After the Taliban recovered from their combat losses, the government was too weak to hold them off.

      There is an unfortunate tendency (Democrats are worst at this) to believe that any dispute can be resolved by negotiating “in good faith”. Our enemies don’t think like that. They regard a willingness to compromise as proof of weakness to be taken advantage of, not reciprocated. As far as they are concerned, victory is all that matters and a Pyrrhic victory is still a victory. You can’t defeat such enemies by pointing out where their best interests lie and appealing to their better natures. You defeat them by doing so much damage that even a Pyrrhic victory becomes impossible.

      • There’s no need for mental gymnastics, the lesson is simple; keep your military out of other countries.

        • Agreed, except for Afghanistan. That was pure retaliation for 911.
          We should have wiped them from this earth and then left.

        • I think the lesson is slightly different:
          The military is a last resort. Like any last resort, it should be unleashed with all the fury at its disposal, because if it fails, you lose everything you’re fighting for.
          Part of that lesson for us (the US) is this: we use our military too often, and not as a last resort. We have many other tools at our disposal, and diplomacy is among the least effective of them.

        • For thousands of years, sending your military into other countries, or your men into other tribes, whatever, was a time-honored way to succeed; kill the men, rape the women, and possess the land and crops. Somehow, just in the past 150 years, we’re supposed to believe that we send our military into other countries as a favor to them, after which we must pay them huge money for 50 years. Seems to me, that’s pretty stupid.

    • Wrong lessons from those other wars. Every british soldier in the colonies, every American soldier in the other places has known in the back of their heads that they had a home country to run to if things went bad. And if they didn’t go bad that soldier knew that if he survived he was going home. So he made all efforts to survive. In my day we called the states “the world” and knew that all we had to do was stay alive and we’d go their.

      American soldiers fighting an insurrection on American soil have no place to run to. They’re fighting for their homes. Different animal all together.

      1861 thru 1865 is a truer metric to use for a war between American citizens and the .gov forces. And we see how that ended with the rebels.

      Also, the Indian wars. Didn’t work out so well for the Indians.

      • As far as the Indian wars are concerned, we (the government) lied to the Indians, telling them that they could keep their lands, if they just signed a treaty.
        Thus, the Indians thought they didn’t have to fight for their homelands.
        They learned, the hard way, that our government (and politicians in general) will say anything to get their goals.
        Too many of us still haven’t learned that lesson.
        Those who fail to study history, and all that.

  16. NJ is a place to be avoided at all costs. $150,000 is not nearly enough for 3 years in jail; how about 10 times that much? I swear that NJ cops great grandfathers were SS & Gestapo and that is what they idolize.

    • Totally agree.
      $50K/year is just a little above average income per year. It does not even come close to addressing three years in prison, it only addresses three years of lost income.

  17. So liberals are having a hissy fit over Rigue One because republicans aren’t? I might have to see it now, even though the makers’ previous statements seemed off-putting. I have no problem with women and non-whites being protagonists, I was just afraid it would be so loaded with SJW tripe, it would be unwatchable.

  18. I’ve never patronized ABQ guns, only their competition if the *cough* fair city of Albuquerque so I can’t comment on the place. I will however say that I hope the market, in terms of ammo and firearms bloody well crashes. I’m simply tired of the outrageous prices. I don’t fault the sellers for pricing up as high as the market will bear but that doesn’t mean I’m happy shelling out the amount of money that the market currently demands. I was looking and a couple SKS’s at Cabela’s today that were beat to hell and back. Both were Yugo’s just like mine (except mine doesn’t look like it was run over by multiple tanks). I paid $212 for that rifle (still got the receipt) in 2005, today they wanted $799 each. 377% inflation in 11 years is a bit much and you see the same thing in other rifles as well. I paid $80 for a really nice M44 Nagant and $100 for a nice 91/30 around the same time. These days $450 is standard and most of those rifles are similarly beat to shit. Yeah, if the market crashes back to pre-Obama levels I’ll be smiling. I don’t seem to recall gun stores struggling to survive back in the days of aught-six, so I doubt it will cause a lot of problems for them.

    As for the John Browning video he missed the ultimate abomination brought forth upon that pistol: the external safety, which JMB himself thought was unnecessary (due to the already present grip safety) and didn’t include on the pistol until the Army made him add it. He nailed the price issue with many of today’s 1911’s and his comments on “the plastic pistol” were pretty darn funny.

  19. There’s a lot of problems out there, and 99% of them are from the evil POS communists selling their buzzword “PROGRESS”. If enough people call them on it, they’ll move on to occupy another term to attempt to hide their true permaneny POS nature. I think the next possible term should be Olestra Symptom. Anyway it’s all the liberal_progessive_communist_globalist [&] (D) and the news and fake news follows them where they tend to congregate or rear their fing ugly heads. So. . . yeah, let’s see, mall fights? Soros (D); NJ BB gun? (D), the pre-election [thinking Hillary was gonna win] planned attack on Israel (sprung now any because why the F not what chance do the POS (D) have to accomplish it before a pending civil war answered); China getting a carrier to sea trials in the same week it announces it beat NASA and the European Space Agency to fielding an Em-Drive, when LORAL only gave multi-stage-to-orbit technology under Bill Clinton-head so that the Clinton Foundation could get enough $$$ for Hillory to lose but still be ale to consider running in 2020. Meanwhile China is going into an “Arduous winter” (a/k/a Clinton Foundation telethon’s for the starving people in China, because Haiti proved that gang rape of peasants is more fun if they’re not skin and bones, and China needs foreighn $$$ aid money because the food runs out to their new heavily armed island were supposed to have State Department funding through the world bank); POS (D) attempt thru Facebook/Google to censor real news to protect the mainstream “Fake News” that was supposed to be couched in a Rennaissance, except it’s POS hydra head hillary sucked it harder (than Lewinsky was ever capable of) in the last election. Amazon.com got a pass up till now but Trump might break it down smaller than AT&T pieces…
    Let’s see. Did I forget any? Not a Fing one but it would take forever to enumerate so f dat.
    And
    F the evil (D) and their voters, legal and il- .

  20. RIP Carrie Fisher, and Rogue One was surprising for the number of AR15 components seen onscreen, most of the rebel blasters were basically funked up AR15 based doodads. Pretty gnarly to watch, I even commented on it at the time and got a lovely SHHHHH from my SO. ahhh good times.

  21. NJ bans slingshots too. And there are deep restrictions on airsoft guns. I think it’s illegal to possess a stone capable of inflicting damage when hurled.

    • For a POS state full to the brown rim with POS (D) NJ is strangely left for a state where you gotta turn right to go left.

      “Progress” means Communism

  22. Nanashi, we all wanted Jimmy to get both of them. From what I understand, he dropped the closest threat and the other guy simply got out fast enough to save himself. There’s video (currently in police custody), I can’t wait to see it!

  23. How the hell did they dismiss the drug charges yet convict him on weapons charges? He had heroin, syringes, and a BB gun. He obviously had drugs and NOT a weapon.

  24. What’s good about Rogue One and except for here don’t mention 1, 2, & 3, is that our youth have been watching Elyseum, the Divergent Series, and Hunger Games series. They have been unconsciously acclimated to active rebellion against a future fascistic govt. I think that’s great. I’ve met sad suburbanites who wanted the Occupy Wallstreet folks to go home. Why? Where’s your 401K? They weren’t used to the idea of protest to get what you want. (There’s voting too, etc.) 🙂

    That our youths can entertain picking up arms for a Constitutional cause is a healthy thing. Am I calling for armed rebellion? Nope. Should we be willing and able? Yes. That’s why we are here today working through our imperfect past and hopeful future.

    • The PT, 1, 2, and 3’s message is about people doing terrible things with good intentions. Even Padme questions if the Republic is still the same side they are fighting for or if Palpatine has twisted it too much. A warning about how a Republic can be twisted into a dictatorship through blind loyalty and under the guise and false promise of increased security.

  25. Rogue One… Wait. I’ll bet they require firearms to resist a tyranical dictatorship. Do they? Dooooooo they? I’ll bet they do!

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