More Political Incorrectness from Adventure Outdoors

On October 24, 2012October 24, 2012 By Tom LindsayIn Politics3 Comments

Adventure Outdoors in Smyrna, Georgia, probably my favorite gun store in the world, has done it again.

When you vote in Georgia, you are given a nice peach sticker that says “I’m a Georgia Voter.” Now, if you bring that sticker to the store, you can register to win a new Glock 22 or a Browning hunting rifle.

This, of course, has drawn the ire of a local politician, State Senator Vincent Fort, Democrat of Atlanta. And, no, Adventure Outdoors is not in his district.

I’m not sure how well the idea will hold up, considering there is a law in Georgia prohibiting anyone from offering money or goods in exchange for voting or registering to vote. But, it certainly will provide enough publicity for the store. Besides, the only proof you need to bring in is a sticker, and I keep my extras in the drawer, so I can wear two or three at a time. That gigs ’em, too.

Is The Message Clear?

On October 12, 2012 By Tom LindsayIn Politics, RKBA, Twitter1 Comment

Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.

We in the gun community use the phrase all the time. We know what it means. Don’t regulate our guns, instead, lock up the criminals. Yet, a person on the outside of the gun community doesn’t see it the same way we do.

Case in point: I ran across this today on Twitter, with the hashtag #guncontrol:

Guns don’t kill people. People kill people. Probably the most ignorant ass hat backwards slogan/statement ever!

My reply to this was simple:

The point of that statement is even if you remove all guns from the world you will still have people who will kill others.

Gun control advocates see guns as the evil common denominator in the gun violence equation, and I can understand why. They are, after all, the easiest part of the problem to see and understand. Someone is hurt or dead, and a gun was involved. If we removed the gun from the system, then no harm would have happened.

In truth, this is a simplistic and ignorant way to look at violence. It is the person who committed the violence who is at fault, not the gun. The fact that millions of guns are never involved in crime is ignored. In fact, if you were to point this out, you would probably be answered by one word: “Yet.”

Thus, we see gun “control” advocates for what they really are, even if they refuse to admit it: gun confiscation advocates.

The problem with this, of course, is that these people don’t stop to consider my counterpoint, that, even in the absence of guns, the person who committed the assault or murder remains. And, there is enough evidence from countries and regions where guns are not as easily available that these criminals would, in the absence of guns, seek other weapons, and commit the same heinous crimes.

The gun confiscation advocates also completely discount the possibility that the motives of the person holding the gun could in any way influence how the gun is used. All guns, in their eyes, are used to indiscriminately kill innocent victims. Never mind the easily completed math:

According to the GunPolicy.org, operated by the University of Sidney, there are 270,000,000 privately owned firearms in the United States. In 2009 there were 9,146 firearms-related homicides. If we assume each homicide was committed with a unique firearm (which is an over-simplification, given that we know of multiple homicides with the same gun) that leaves 269,990,854 guns which were not involved in homicides.

Given the fact that gun ownership is increasing, and gun homicide rates per unit of population are decreasing, can we infer any relationship between the two? Is it possible that these numbers of guns above the ones being used for crime are being kept by law-abiding people? Perhaps the correlation is that murders are decreasing because some potential victims are defending themselves, and because would-be murderers are thinking twice before committing crime.

Which gets back to my counterpoint. If we were to remove all guns from society, there would still exist those persons who are willing and motivated to kill. And those persons would use whatever weapons were available to do so.

Likely, the murder rate would increase, since the ability for the rest of us to defend ourselves has been reduced.

In fact, the picture is even more grim, because, honestly, there is no way to confiscate all the guns from society. Even so-called gun-free societies like Britain and Japan continue to see criminals with guns. After all, if a criminal is willing to break the law in one way – drugs, robbery, prostitution – would they not be willing to break the law by owning a gun?

That brings us back around to the original comment, that this phrase is “[p]robably the most ignorant ass hat backwards slogan/statement ever!” I have to admit, I agree to a point. It’s been taken to the point where it’s become a hackneyed phrase, and it’s obviously lost its meaning on the population in general.

So, I leave you with a task: come up with a phrase to replace “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”

I’ll start.

Lock up the criminals, not my guns.

Yours . . . ?

An Open Letter to Truthers

On September 11, 2012 By Tom LindsayIn 9/11, Politics1 Comment

On this anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001, America pauses to remember those who died at the World Trade Center, Pentagon, and in the fields of Pennsylvania, at the hand of Islamic terrorists. Last year, I wrote about where I was on that day, so that’s not my topic today.

Instead, I am going to put in print what I’ve felt for quite some time. Then, I won’t speak of it again, because it doesn’t warrant the energy or attention.

There are some people who believe that the attacks on our country on September 11 were part of some government conspiracy. Some believe, simply, that George Bush did it. I’m not going to discuss the reasons, because, frankly, it’s not worth it.

Now, I’m not talking about the government having unconnected intelligence suggesting an attack was imminent. That’s happened throughout history, at it’s more a sign of human frailty than of conspiracy or malice.

No, I’m talking about people who believe that someone spent months and months planting explosives in buildings in New York, then set them off with national TV cameras rolling.

Here is what I want to say to those people:

If you honestly believe that the government of the country you live in would kill almost 3,000 of its own people, yet, you continue to live here, then you are either insane, lying, or a complete coward.

What do sane people do when they believe their government kills its own citizens? How can you find out? Go to south Florida and ask. There are strong, successful people there who believed that their government was killing its own citizens, and covering it up. Why did they believe that? Because, in Cuba, it happened. And they gave up everything they had, and got the hell out of their country as fast as they could, and moved their families here.

If I lived in a country where I believed the government was capable of half of the atrocious acts that some of the conspiracy websites spout, then I would do whatever it took, spend whatever I had, to move my family as far from this country as I could. I would leave behind everything. Because that kind of country isn’t worth living in.

So, if you believe in a 9/11 conspiracy, and you still live here, I don’t want to hear it. Move your sorry ass to South America. Until then, we have nothing to discuss.

For that matter, even after that.

Conspiracy and Boortz’s Rule

On August 14, 2012 By Tom LindsayIn Politics

Neal Boortz is a conservative talk show host in Atlanta. I’ve been listening to him for a long time. A long, long time.

One of Neal’s disclaimers for his show is that you should never take him for his word, without first confirming it first through your own investigation. In today’s internet world, that’s not hard to do, and it follows that this rule should be followed for just about anything you encounter.

Case in point, from Infowars and about a zillion other web sources:

National Weather Service Follows DHS In Huge Ammo Purchase

Hollow point bullets designed to cause maximum organ damage

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Why would the National Weather Service need to purchase large quantities of powerful ammo? That’s the question many are asking after the federal agency followed in the footsteps of the Department of Homeland Security in putting out a solicitation for 46,000 rounds of hollow point bullets.

Yes, good question, indeed. Why would they?

So, I did some looking on my own. First, I read the solicitation as it appears on the Federal purchasing web site. Here’s what I read:

Inside Delivery to locations below:
NED:
8,000 rounds to: Ross Lane DOC, NOAA, NMFS, OLE, NED 130 Oak Street, Suite 5, Ellsworth, ME, 04605

First, I thought about calling Ross Lane and asking him what was up. I’d be willing to bet Paul Joseph Johnson didn’t.

But, Instead, I put the address listed into Google Maps. Well, well.

First, it looks like this is a brand new building, as it was under construction at the time the Google Street View car went by. But, it also looks like this office is a shared government office, including the National Marine Fisheries (always usefull in putting down domestic insurrection) and the US Customs Service.

I would be willing to bet that the 200 paper targets and 8,000 rounds of ammunition are for practice by ICE agents. Not for the Weather Service. Conspiracy solved.

So, why does the government buy things under the National Weather Service name? Beats me. My guess is the Customs Service needed ammo, put in their request, and somebody sent it to the Commerce Department (makes sense?), and when they entered the delivery address into Skynet, it used the largest agency at that address to deliver it to.

Of course, it’s also possible that they did it to get a good laugh out of the conspiracy fans, which, if it were true, would actually make me feel a little better about our government.