Bumper sticker (courtesy Gun Control Kills Facebook page)

Regardless of the precise definition—30 rounds. 11 rounds, 8 rounds—I get why the gun control advocates would call an ammunition magazine an “assault clip.” It sounds scary. And I understand the reference to kids. Let’s call it pathological pathos. But the multi-colored peace sign? That’s just funny. Gerald Holtom designed the original peace sign in 1958 for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, whose motto was “ban the bomb.” The stickers appeared on plenty a Volkswagen Beetle; the Toyota Prius is the Bug’s latter day incarnation. So it all works perfectly; including the fact that the nuclear bomb’s threat of mutually assured destruction kept the world safe from nuclear war. Just as privately held “assault clips” keep Americans [relatively] free from crime and government tyranny. I wonder if anyone else got that. [h/t DrVino]

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

113 COMMENTS

    • Actually, a Garand 8-rnd clip can be used as a sort-of “assault clip” [if that means anything]. You can jamb it down onto someone’s nose in a very forceful manner, thus causing them intense mental and facial pain.

      Ban assault clips! And trans fats, and salt, and sugar, and large sodas, and bad thoughts, and ………

  3. Are we sure that’s not ironic…? Cause it sure seems satirical in its cliche’ and the fact that it manages to use two words to make a meaningless phrase.

  4. I saw a sticker on a Prius today at the gym. FOX News the more you watch the less you know.

    I would walk before I got in a Prius.

    • Well, in their defense, that’s not entirely untrue. Watching virtually any mainstream news except in the case of breaking natural disaster or a similar situation makes me almost literally feel myself getting dumber. Everything they say is accompanied by a distant gurgling, sucking sound of intelligence being forever lost.

    • I would walk before I got in a Prius.

      It’s my stealth-mobile. Folks around this liberal college town may think I’m one of them. Truth is I like hi tech and getting 50 mpg. At my CAS matches however I am a bit conspicuous being the only one not driving a big pickup, Chevy Suburban or other large SUV.

      • A retired cop in my gun club drives a Prius. If I want to get an eye roll from him I offer to get him an Obama sticker for it, or ask him if he peeled it off when he took delivery.

      • I’ll relate to you ( in good humor) what I once told a troublesome co-worker about his (much crowed about) prius ‘One of these days when I run off the road in my Tahoe as I drive along smoking and drinking coffee and playing with the radio on the way to work there will be a horror. . . long after I’m air lifted to the hospital and they peel my gas guzzling monster truck loose from the guardrail they will realize there was a second vehicle involved in the accident . . .’

      • You all realize that the Prius batteries will not be able to hold a charge after about five years (estimated; YMMV), at which time they must be replaced at a cost (with labor to R&R the body) greater than buying a new Prius.

  5. I think the only time one of my “CLIPS” hurt a child was when my niece accidentally put a bit of her hair in the follower while loading a magazi–er, uh “CLIP” during one of our range days.

    Ban Idiot antigunners.

  11. “your kids don’t tell me what to do and neither do you, you hysterical harpy”
    My bumper sticker.

  12. Whoa, hold on now. Hippies gotta have stickers on their vehicles. I mean how else are they gonna let potential passengers know that they’re about to be subjected to un-Godly amounts of body odor and patchouli stench?

  14. Conservatives don’t cotton to slogans. When they finally produce one, it’s never the sort of rallying cry capable of sending people to the ramparts, such as “Yes We Can!” or “Bush Lied, Kids Died!” “27 Million Americans Can’t Be Wrong” is a wry observation, not an urgent call to battle. “Annoy the Media, Vote Bush!” — barely qualifies as a suggestion.

    Conservatives write books and articles, make arguments, and seek debates, but are perplexed by slogans. (Of course, another reason Republicans may avoid bumper stickers is to prevent their cars from being vandalized, which brings us right back to another mob characteristic of liberals.)

    By contrast, liberals thrive on jargon as a substitute for thought. According to Le Bon, the more dramatic and devoid of logic a chant is, the better it works to rile up a mob: “Given to exaggeration in its feelings, a crowd is only impressed by excessive sentiments. An orator wishing to move a crowd must make an abusive use of violent affirmations. To exaggerate, to affirm, to resort to repetitions, and never to attempt to prove anything by reasoning are methods of argument well known to speakers at public meetings.”

    Liberals love slogans because the “laws of logic have no action on crowds.” Mobs, Le Bon says, “are not to be influenced by reasoning, and can only comprehend rough-and-ready associations of ideas.”5 He could be describing the New York Times and other journals of elite opinion when he describes periodicals that “manufacture opinions for their readers and supply them with ready- made phrases which dispense them of the trouble of reasoning.” Ann Coulter, ‘Demonic’

    • Wow. I normally avoid punditry at all costs (see my comment upthread about the mainstream media), but that really made a lot of sense.

      • Coulter honestly needs to start using a nom de plume, because she does make a lot of really good points, but they always get swallowed up in the controversy brought on by her more inflammatory “pundit” stuff

  16. Perhaps this is a plea for help by an English-challenged sticker producer, whose children are addicted to salted chips. Save the Children, BAN SALTED CHIPS!

  17. Change “ban” to “buy” and it will work for me. (Although I don’t believe I’ve seen assault clips for sale anywhere.)

  19. I like my motto better:

    “Protect kids by teaching them to protect themselves and protecting them yourself.”

    Kinda long lol also too much personal responsibility for today’s left though.

  21. My daughter is a teacher. She says this in reference to “paper” clips that the kids shoot with rubber bands. Probably not true but it feels good.

  22. “…the fact that the nuclear bomb’s threat of mutually assured destruction kept the world safe from nuclear war”. Either it’s opposites day here at TTAG or you need to get your damned head checked. During that whole cold war pissing contest, the world was repeatedly pushed to the brink of total annihilation by nukes. It’s nothing short of a miracle we survived.

      • Which part of that is bullshit, exactly? The statement that we came to the brink of nuclear war multiple times, or that the constant threat of nuclear war is more or less the precise opposite of being safe from it?

        • The Russians were ready to nuke us several times, but didn’t because I and my associates were ready to convert their asylum of an empire into ionized gas at a moment’s notice. THAT bullshit.

    • Closies only count with horseshoes and handgrenades. Not nukes. “Almost” means it didn’t happen.

      MAD may have prevented the Big One. But it sure allowed a whole lot of little ones to go on.

    • Fear of immediate, catastrophic retaliation did, in fact, maintain a balance between the superpowers during the cold war. I’d suggest reading up on your history a bit, Roy.

      • I actually don’t necessarily deny that MAD gave a pretty good reason for the Soviets or us to not go starting a ground war, but the idea that having huge nuclear arsenals aimed at one another for almost half a century on a hair trigger kept us safe from nuclear war is a preposterous statement.

        • Did we have a nuclear war? To my knowledge the only time nukes have been used in war was when one side had them and the other didn’t.

        • Roy, both sides are still there and armed today. And now the Chinese want to play. Crack a book once in a while, OK?

  24. hey ive been hit by an assault clip i pissed off a friend and BAM right upside the head came a p mag …i mean clip and it hurt

  25. Ban assault clips sure, anything over say, 8 rounds. My Garand isn’t one to take those extended clips anyway…

      • You missed the humor. A clip is not a magazine. The Garand’s internal magazine loads with an 8-round en bloc clip. Your Glock or AR doesn’t have a clip, it has a magazine.

        • Ralph, sometimes this crowd is lost. . . however I feed my SKS ‘clips’ all the time and often save time by refilling my AR ‘magazines’ by use of clips. I suppose when I charge a 30 round magazine by use of clips they become, by association, ‘assault clips’.

        • Ardent, I know. I use stripper clips all the time. But that wasn’t the point of VBS’ comment.

          While the humor was a bit weak, it seems that his intentions were good.

        • Hahahahahahahahaha
          Such a typical Prius.
          Then I remembered. I have clips that hold my mags together.
          Now I’m peeved. Those H&K clips aren’t cheap.

    • Do I have to snip the clips for my sks so they only hold 8 rounds? I promise not to cheat and slip the other 2 rounds in manually. Promise.

    • My dad has (had?) that on a tshirt 30 years ago, from when they were building the St. Lucie nuclear plants. I wonder if that shirt is still around. Have to ask him at Thanksgiving.

  28. Go ahead, ban an imaginary thing…..I don’t know if any rifle/gun that utilizes a so called “Assault Clip?

  31. I like to make fun of the peaceniks who don’t know the origin of the Peace Symbo. I just note that it is very similar to the unit patch for the 27th SS Volunteer Division Langemarck… Worn by Belgium’s who were on the German’s side during WWII.

    Then I watch their heads explode!

  32. Wow…this pic has been around for awhile. Seriously, who cares. Give me a review stop with this BS. You are beating a dead horse, preaching to the choir, etc. Plus 1A speech…who cares how stupid they sound.

  37. How unoriginal, Farago. I got my Prius 7 years ago for the tax credit, amazing technology, HOV lanes, and absolute reliability. 126K miles and I just got my first brake job.

    Gun people talk about the shallowness and stupidity of discriminating against rifles because of cosmetic features and then ridicule and brand others for the cars they drive. Expected more from the armed “Intelligentsia”.

    • Expected more from the armed “Intelligentsia”.

      Sorry to disappoint. Have a granola bar. I’ll make you feel better.

      • I’m just going to hit refresh on this column.
        I needed a good chuckle, and I’m laughing my arse off!
        Thanks Ralph!

        • RF just put a new anti flaming policy in place, so I can’t even address you by your chosen handle. The cost of the prius is such that any savings on gas is eaten up by the overhead. Not a good deal financially. New cars rarely are.

          My 20 yo camry only gets 25 mpg. But those are cheaper miles than your prius gets.

    • Move somewhere with weather. In the winter around here, a Prius is easily the least reliable, most dangerous vehicle you can drive. Watching a Prius try to drive uphill on slightly slick roads is comedy that can not be described in proper detail. It’s almost like watching high-speed video of it going uphill, but in reverse, with smoke pouring out from under the hood, and every other car driving past it at the speed limit. With two decent-sized colleges in town, enough professors try to drive their Prius everywhere that this happens when I’m there to see it three or four times a year, every winter. And that’s on the days when it’s warm enough to even start it.

      I mean, they’re not the best thing in the warmer months, either. Of course you only just got your first brake job, I’m pretty sure Toyota designed the braking system so that the pads don’t actually make contact with the rotors. The only thing a Prius does slower than go from 50mph to 0 is attempt to get up to 50 in the first place.

      You know what’s almost the same car, only much more pleasant? The hybrid Camry. The biggest difference, really, is the body style. See, with the Camry, you get the same benefits as the Prius, with more comfort, and seventy to eighty-five percent lower smug emissions. If you actually live in an area where you can truly benefit from a hybrid, which most hybrid owners don’t, but if you do, then buy a hybrid. But pick one that isn’t a symbol. You knew people would react this way to your car, that’s why you brought it up. You wanted to defend it. That’s why you bought it in the first place.

      I have two other less likely theories. There’s a psychological phenomenon, I can not remember the name for it, but it’s an almost universal truth that if someone spends more on something than it’s worth, they will try to defend it rather than admit they made a mistake. It’s the same principal as having someone try wine from two different bottles, most people (including certified sommeliers) will prefer the one with the higher price tag, even if the tags were switched before the bottles were shown. The second theory, you’ve never driven a real car. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about, I’ve helped a lot of Kia owners with this same problem. I knew a guy who bought a brand new Sorento off the lot (brand new, the only miles it had were from the test drive) and thought it was the greatest car ever made, even though the driver’s side mirror fell off on the way home (not covered by the warranty, by the way).

    • Agreed. Also, all the Zimmerman-worship, Obama-blaming, and “libtard” comments play right into making us all look like the stereotype that the antis expect.

    • Just as a matter of curiosity, do you know where the materials for your Prius’ batteries come from? Have you ever looked at the pollution associated with battery manufacturing? Have you included those environmental costs in your “eco-friendly” vehicle?

    • I personally love saving money on gas; that’s $.46/gallon I’m not giving to the state for its purposes.

      On your username: I also <3 my CZ 82.

  40. “Protect Children
    With Assault Clips”

    (“with”: Of course we hope people would assume that we are using said “clips” to protect children, not that we are protecting children in possession of the clips, as the sentence could be interpreted either way. While both are acceptable and appropriate, the latter doesn’t mean much of anything.)

  41. Stupid libtard democrats. Lets ban a metal or plastic box with a spring in it which only costs a few buck to produce. If you vote libtard (democrat), you get what you get.

    • Yes, no anti-gun legislation whatsoever was passed during the glorious time that W was in office. You’re playing right into the (contrived) left-right paradigm.

  44. I searched “assault clips” on Bing. I really wish we could ban those.

    (Most of the results had nothing to do with firearms.)

  45. I think it’s kinda funny. It might be something I’d put on my car because seems sarcastic. “Ban Assault Clips”…Thats funny. We all know that there is no such thing as “assault clips” and the use of the word clips instead of rifles makes me believe it’s a joke. I had a similar style bumper sticker, and meet so many idiots it was great. I made a sticker that said Obama 2013 that looked like the 2012 one. Most idiots never got the joke. The only people that got It were gun club members.

  46. Rule of thumb…..

    I disagree with anything written on a Prius or Smart car.

    On a related note…. I think we should be allowed to hit them with a stick no bigger than our thumb as well.

  47. screw the Prius hate. I’m thinking about one for my next car; my brother (who is hardly a liberal–he’s a redneck roughneck with an arsenal that makes me drool) drives one and it works really damn well for city driving.

    • I don’t hate the Prius as a car, I do however thoroughly dislike the vast majority of people I’ve met who drive them. Of course there are exceptions to that but VERY few of those exceptions seem to live in my area. There are other alternatives that are much less ghastly and don’t require the smug “I’m better than you” attitude most prius drivers around here seem to think is a must.

      • That attitude seems to come with many Volvos, too. Oh dear, there’s one of those nasty stereotypes that will offend many Volvo owners.

        • I don’t know, the smugness surrounding a Volvo almost seems warranted sometimes. The few driving around here regularly (though, because they do have that same problem with hills that the Prius does, not too many) tend to be much, much older than the driver.

        • My wife owns a Volvo wagon. We call it granma. Got to get a running start at a hill. The thing of it is, it runs no matter what. We joke that in order to stop it you have to run a wooden stake thru it’s heart.

          Volvo’s are the car you buy new. Drive it for 20 years and give it to your first kid that goes to college. When that kid’s done with it you give it to a 16 yo family member that just got their license. When they’re done with it you sell it for a hundred bucks to the dude that does your lawn and he drives it for ever.

Comments are closed.