You’d think the run-up to Christmas would be a time to pause and reflect and get the hell off the backs of lawful American gun owners. No such luck. The Interwebz are ablaze with anti-gun articles (and Tweet wars) between those who seek to defend their Constitutionally-protected right to keep and bear arms and those who believe that our 2A bulwark against tyranny is an evil anachronism. (Hint to gun control advocates: it isn’t). Once again, TTAG’s editors and Armed Intelligentsia have trolled the web on your behalf (so to speak) to sustain and enhance your firearms Fingerspitzengefühl. Make the jump for all the news that didn’t fit . . .

“The attacks on first responders came 10 days after one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history that left 20 students and six adults dead at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut and intensified the debate about gun control in the United States.” The media’s stoking the fires (so to speak), starting to lump shootings together. Not good. Reuters

By thy ‘toon thy shall be known. David Horsey creates an incendiary anti-gun Christmas card cartoon [above] and then tries to come off all reasonable about gun control in the article lingering beneath it. Jerk.

Texas Congresscritter Ron Paul’s not a fan of the NRA policeman-in-every-school plan. Generally. Allegedly. “Only a totalitarian society would even claim absolute safety as a worthy ideal, because it would require total state control over its citizens’ lives.” cbsnews.com

Firearms-friendly lawyer Peter Tilem reckons NY Penal Law § 400.00(5) requires bureaucrats to publish the name and addresses of concealed carry permit holders. Now there’s a gun law worth changing. newyorkcriminalattorneyblog.com

John Sides charts the media meme that the NRA is out of touch with its members. 1019 extremely revealing comments later, I’m not so sure. washingtonpost.com

Another data dump says Assault-weapons ban no guarantee mass shootings would decrease. “Some good news” a readers writes, withholding an exclamation mark. It’s early days and fence straddlers don’t read foxnews.com.

In the search for “solutions” to Sandy Hook, ABC gins-up some day-glo gun stats to scare . . . well, I’m not quite sure. This “America is awash with guns” stuff makes me proud to be American.

“A Jewish community strongly supportive of gun control plus Jewish lawmakers eager to enact new gun control laws may bring Jews into a lead role as the nation debates federal measures to rein in mass murders at its malls and schools.” This could well be the most upsetting sentence I’ve ever read.  forward.com

Over at AR-15.com (a.k.a., the big Kahuna) DARC’s Richard Mason divides the public into six basic groups . . .

1. Pro 2A – don’t tread on me
2. Anti 2A – you are morally corrupt for liking guns
3. Owns a gun(s) but welcomes ‘reasonable’ restrictions for assorted reasons
4. Doesn’t own a gun, isn’t opposed to guns but thinks there should be various restrictions of firearms
5. It doesn’t affect me, who cares: is the mall open yet?
6. Non-Americans

. . . and then says “there are only two groups, regardless of where you think you stand on the issue. You are either for your Bill of Rights, you are against them.” Binary. But I think you knew that.

California Still Awash in Guns Despite Pioneering Gun Regulations. Now that’s what I call good news. Until CA’s PC SOB’s “strengthen” their AWB. huffingtonpost.com

The New Yorker’s Alec Wilkinson [above] is the last person on planet earth who should be arguing for gun control—unless he restricts the prohibition to himself. Which he did. Thank God.

Once during the winter I had driven up to Provincetown on an errand and coming back along Route 6 a car of what I took to be high-school students, or maybe fishermen, drew alongside me. This was the late seventies, when some of the people who lived in Provincetown had hard feelings for the gay people among them. The boys, taking me for being gay, I suppose, began cursing at me and pointing to me to pull over, so we could fight. I pursed my lips as if offering them a kiss, and when they began screaming and shaking their fists, I pointed my gun at them, and they fell away like bridesmaids parting at the end of the aisle. I was so excited that I sang “Me and My Uncle,” by the Grateful Dead, which is about cowboys, all the rest of the way home.

Trouble ahead. Trouble behind. And you know that notion just crossed my mind.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

39 COMMENTS

  1. -“A Jewish community strongly supportive of gun control plus Jewish lawmakers eager to enact new gun control laws may bring Jews into a lead role as the nation debates federal measures to rein in mass murders at its malls and schools.” This could well be the most upsetting sentence I’ve ever read.-

    I’m not Jewish, but I’m now considering sending a donation to the JPFO to help them in their efforts to reach out to Jewish Americans. I’m still not sure how a people who have historically been disarmed, rounded up, then marched to their deaths by multiple governments could be against their own personal right to own an effective means of self defense.

    • I am Jewish FWIW, and am sending JPFO another donation. I joined when they first set up around 1990. It’s sad to me that, for many American Jews, liberalism has become their real religion. Taking on “gun control” as a Jewish cause is embarrassing at best. And yeah, there are a lot of Jews who have some influence over society so unfortunately their efforts might have results. (We discussed it at our last Zionist world domination conspiracy meeting lol)

      • As a Jew I support the JPFO. I can say Israelis and Jews in America are not the same by a long shot. For people who say never again I watch most American Jews lining up like lambs for slaughter. It is really the Israelis who are the sheep dogs in all of this. Truly sad.

        • I know a rabbi who has five young children (last count), lives off a well traveled street in a city, and has a big menorah on his front lawn. The house door could be kicked in by a ten year old and the man is not built for hand to hand combat. Guns are foreign to him. He’s pure Jewish east coast born and bred ie gun-phobic. I can’t imagine how he will defend his family if either some crazed meth-head or an anti-Semite ever breaks into his home.

        • I am also Jewish. I could never understand why my relatives are SO anti self-defence! The first rule of life if “Stay Alive”. I am an outcast in my family and they only know about 2 .380’s and 1 .45 (hand guns)!
          The only living person that knows what I posess, outside of the governments, my LGS, and Santa is my wife. I take different guns to different ranges and never discuss what I own with anyone. Parinoid? You bet. Safer? Ditto.

    • Daniel Greenberg (www.sultanknish.com) did a study on this question. His conclusion is the liberal American Jew is more liberal than Jew. Their diluted faith is replaced by socialist/marxist beliefs. With each generation their connection to their religion diminishes. Their children often choose to eliminate religion from their lives or they adopt a different path. Some become Christian and others become orthodox Jews. The orthodox Jews on the other hand are numerically on the increase and are largely conservative in their politics.

      • Bingo. The American jew is quite a different breed than the Israeli counterpart. Nasty strain of lib psychosis in US jews.

    • What makes you say that, RF? I’ve not heard anything to that effect before, do you have anything I can read regarding it? Not accusing you of being wrong, I just like to see for myself and know the “how”s and “why”s.

      • I think they used to put more time, effort, and money into trying to reach out to American Jews. It was probably like trying to have a conversation with a steel wall. Still, I suspect they still do try to reach out. The JPFO’s presence is there for interested Jews to find them and the JPFO does excellent research into gun issues other gun rights groups have used.

    • The JPFO may have (or not) given up on their fellow Jews yet they are still the very best credible source for Jews to turn to so to counter-balance all the anti-gun misinformation. The new orthodox rabbi director is able to use his rabbinical credentials in ways with the Jewish community that Aaron Zelman (RIP) was not able too. I am a member of the JPFO.

  3. The stats listed with the pic of the hamburger don’t add up (on the site it links to). For one, it claims 8 million guns in the US is “89 for every 100 people.” The US population is over 300 million, and the number of guns is a lot more than 8 million. Do any so-called journalists check their facts any more?

    • It also states that there were 8.5 million guns bought in the US during 2010, so I guess the author thinks there were none existed before 2010, and that they have all been bought since. But hey, its a cool graphic!

    • Ugh, I had a huge debate on Reddit yesterday where the guy eventually started linking to a NYU professor’s post claiming gun ownership is decreasing. I showed him the actual Gallup poll graphs which do NOT match the bogus Gallup poll graphs the prof was using, but he adamantly refuses to acknowledge that there is any increase in gun ownership. He think that it’s just a few thousand people buying millions of guns each year apparently.

  4. All this doom and gloom has had me down for the last week or so. Two recent occurrences have helped pull me out of it.

    1) Those in my family previously leery of guns have changed their tune, and we have a large family outing at a shooting range this week. The conversations at the Christmas party tonight weren’t of evil assault rifles needing to be banned, but the joys of shooting and future firearms purchases.

    2) My wife was given the opportunity to shoot a full auto MP5 at our local range (for free! Being an attractive young woman at a range certainly has its perks!) and the look of pure full auto joy on her face was enough to life my spirits. The ensuing social media posting of the video was well received and no one suggested that the gun was evil or that we murder the innocent. And it was even a REAL assault rifle, not a neutered wannabe.

    The purpose of me posting this is this:

    Times are rough and the future is uncertain for America. But in between the persistent letter writing and calling of senators and politicians that we should all be doing, remember to take a step back, relax, and enjoy life. We can beat this, but not if we let the propaganda barrage break our spirits and minds.

    So go out, enjoy the holidays, take a deep breath, and find something that makes you smile. It’s the only way to make it through this.

      • Yep Target World. If you’re ever there and see a 20-something year old YSWG scrounging brass like a man possessed, that’s me. Now usually with wife in tow. Feel free to say hi any time.

        And yes, I misspoke. An MP5 is in fact a sub machine gun, not an assault rifle.

    • Nitpick: an MP5 is a submachine gun, not an assault rifle. But yeah, they’re fun, especially the suppressed models.

  5. I am not 100% in love with the fatalistic attitude that we will have more oppressive firearms laws passed in the wake of the Sandy Hill shooting. There’s more to this story than one disturbed kid stealing his mother’s guns.

    Many (most? all?) media types have grown up with no father figure, and in environments where they have no opportunity to learn about firearms. This is sad, but true. And then they turned into adults who are vehemently opposed to gun rights: So be it.

    Look on them with pity. SHTF they won’t last a minute.

    Charlie

  6. To everyone on TTAG
    We wish you all a Very Merry Christmas,
    A Happy Hanukkah
    A Merry Kwanza
    And a Safe and Happy New Year!!!
    God Bless You All!!!!
    Speedracer5050 & Family!!!

  7. Terrible what’s happened in new york, so I wouldn’t say it’s a good thing.

    But I guess a silver lining of sorts could be whether it was hunting rifles or scary black rifles, either way this guy was a felon who by law shouldn’t have guns as well as maybe firearms that were illegal in themselves in that state. IE DERP GUN LAWZ WORK!?!

    • I wouldn’t count on that “silver lining” for a few reasons. First, Piers “Deport Me” Morgan is already referring, via Twitter, to the weapon used as an “assault weapon” even though the police have only referred to it as “possibly a rifle”. They’re already pushing the meme hard-core. Since the police refer to the weapon as “possibly a rifle”, I would imagine it’s not an “assault weapon”, because if it were, we’d have never heard the end of it yet. It’s also “nevermind” on the issue of this guy being a felon and barred from owning *any* firearm. It’s also “nevermind” that he killed his grandmother with a(n) (assault)hammer a while back. If this turns out to be a scoped hunting rifle, then they will suddenly jump to our argument that “anything used as a weapon to assault another is an ‘assault weapon'” – only they will use that to cry for bans on those as well. Maybe then we’ll get the FUDs’ attention. Maybe not.

      • Oh, and also “nevermind” on the fact NY State has an “assault weapons” ban and magazine restrictions.

      • I would hope that a few of the Gun Culture 1.0 types are noticing that the media reporting and polling on the issue of a new ban are often lumping their traditional-looking semi-autos together with the scary-looking modern sporting rifles that they may see having no use and are willing to write-off.

        Mike in NC (still running Gun Culture 1.5beta)

  8. Its better to have gun stores than McDonalds, McDonalds kills people( make you fat and gives heart problems), while gun stores only empty your wallet.

    But seriously you have too many McDonalds, here in Bosnia there are only two and they are constantly failing.

    • +1
      Glad to hear McDonalds is failing in Bosnia. A wise lot you Bosnians are! 🙂
      I read that in China McDonalds and other Western imported fast food chains are being directly linked to a dramatic increase in childhood obesity and adult heart disease and diabetes, both of which were nearly unheard of 30 years ago.
      They’ve already taken their toll here in the US.

  9. The only things the hamburger poster makes me want to do is to grill up some free range organic beef burgers and to ponder what new .22 rifle I want to shoot.

  10. OK…the picture really gets my goat so to speak. The perp spent 18 yrs in prison for beating his grandmother to death. Then somehow gets out? And now it will be the guns fault. Bless the families.

  11. Rest In Peace to my fallen brother firefighters.

    No clue why a murderer would be let lut of prison. We all know criminals are punished to the full extent of the law, am I right?

  13. Most Americans have a vastly-overrated picture of what psychiatric ‘care’ can and cannot do, and it’s due in great part to the arrogance of mental-health professionals–those highly-educated quacks who are practicing a very NON-scientific, NON-professional craft, fraught with theory, luck, and sheer hubris, yet who still insist that they know it all. They SOMEtimes are able to fix or help folks that have mild mental disorders or chemical imbalances, such as the depressed, those who don’t have MAJOR problems, those whose wires are not permantently scrambled; They have a dismal record of repairing the deeply psychotic, the desperately insane, or the downright psychopathic. I’m relatively sure that the monster from New York who ambushed two firemen received extended psychiatric ‘help’ while in prison, and that some ‘expert’ declared him to be absolutely safe to return to society. Well, THAT turned out well, didn’t it?
    This happens so regularly as to be commonplace; Psychiatrists and other mental-health wizards are all convinced that they have the answers, and the right combination of drugs and ‘therapy’ can render a dangerously-deranged human being ‘normal.’ When some lunatic (non-PC, but it’s descriptive) can convince one of these ‘experts’ that they’re ABsolutely, comPLETEly cured, they are happily eager to sign the paperwork demanding the nutjob’s release. Liberals are likewise convinced that there’s no such thing as a bad boy, and that counselling and some meds will make a kitten-drowning self-mutilating demon into a tractable accountant some day, so they are eager to accept the ‘professional’s opinion. This is the way our legislators and courts feel as well, more often than not, thus the suspended sentences, short jail terms, or vacations in mental hospitals they often give out. The whole idea of parole or short sentences (less than life–or death) for someone who murders is positively inSANE. My idea is quite strict–if you murder, you stay in prison for just as long as your victim is still dead. I don’t care of you WERE ‘sick’ when you did it; Your victim is just as dead.
    I recall a perfect case-in-point incident from my own home town, in the early-1980’s. The psychopathic mental defective first beat a man to death in a local park, for no particular reason, and was found ‘not guilty by reason of insanity.’ He then spent several years in the state’s mental institution, and the ‘professionals’ there determined that he’d made SO much improvement that he was safe to let out on furloughs during the day. SHOCKingly, the bastidge went out one day on his bicycle, along with a .38 revolver that he’d stolen, and ended up at another local park where he gunned down four teenagers–two boys, two girls–who caught him rummaging through their tent. All four died.
    Chalk up another one for the ‘mental health professionals.’

  14. Update: Bushmaster. Also armed with a revolver and shotgun. So now we’ll never hear the end of it. Again. DoublePlusMore. “Nevermind” he was a felon and could not lawfully posess any of the firearms. “Nevermind” that there’s a real possibility the Bushmaster was illegal in NY even for a non-felon (no word on capacity of magazine[s] used). He did leave a note: “… do what I like doing best, killing people.” Last time was with an assault hammer.

  17. Anti gunners always tell me to justify why I need a dreaded “black rifle”. They tell me I don’t need one for hunting and that the British aren’t coming back. My response, increasingly, is that I need one of these things to protect me from from them. Nowadays, liberals feel that winning an election by 51.8% means the winner takes all; and they have the perfect right to force the other (almost) half of the country to do whatever they say. We are becoming less free and our government less representative.

    Tell anyone who demands that you justify your ownership of guns that they are the reason. The 2nd Amendment isn’t about hunting or self protection – the Founders meant for the people at large to have the means to violently resist an abusive government. The reality is that so called assault rifles are exactly the type of gun the Founders meant us to have.

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