The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …
This is made of utter fail for our opponents Boycott:
Congratulations to the folks at NGVAC, you’ve likely succeeded in being salespeople of the year for Starbucks Coffee. If this number keeps going up, Starbucks isn’t just going to ignore you’ll, they’ll tell you to protest them again so they can see another boost in sales that day.
Yes, that’s 6600+ people, and the number just keeps going up. Last night it was at 5900.
We all probably recall the essay which outlined the distinction between the Wolves, the Sheep and the Sheepdogs, but every once in a while you run across someone that epitomizes that, and is able to articulate it in an interesting an engaging way.
This Dutch General is pretty obviously a sheepdog, and this kind of idea is certainly good to get in front of a TED audience. TED might be stuff that white people like, but that Video has 143,000 views. I watched this wondering what people like @CSGV and the “peace” movement generally think about statements like this?
Meanwhile, Oklahoma is becoming a vanguard state in the struggle to ban the use of aborted human fetuses in food products to be consumed by humans, a problem heretofore unknown by anyone, save that narrow demographic consisting of insomniacs who own shortwave radios.
My god, it’s like the Age of Reason never even happened.
I’ve been pondering if our elected leaders have never really been all that bright, but we could count on dead tree media to politely hide the worst of the idiocy from us, or whether we’re really on our way to electing potted plants.
I love the Wall Street Journal and the fact that they can make almost any economic story interesting. For example, the leading gong salesman in the U.S. Yes, gongs.
When the economy was going gangbusters, salesmen were piling into gongs. Sales people seem to like making customers bang gongs to ease the pain of buying something they might not be able to afford.
“But as soon as the recession hit, bam! It stopped,” says Mr. Borakove. Gong sales shifted over to the meditation market. “Because when people go broke,” he says, “they get spiritual.”
Turns out there are a few folks in the gong business, and they aren’t joking about the spiritual aspect of gongs. Their top buyers now are yoga instructors and people who are buying “planet gongs,” probably related to the end of the world predictions.
The gong dealer says that Countrywide was a buyer during the subprime crazy selling days. This should be a warning sign. Any business that thought it was a good idea to buy a giant gong probably deserves to go out of business with a few exceptions.
Another random fact I find amusing is that the tv show “Scrubs” can singlehandedly boost gong sales.
That reminded Mr. Borakove of the “Scrubs” episode where J.D. says to Julie, “Um, now it’s time to ring the sex gong.” Whenever that line airs, no matter where in the world, gong orders pour into Gongs Unlimited.
Extrano’s Alley points to some new polling showing strong support for the Second Amendment and gun ownership among Americans. The poll also shows low support (30%) for ownership of semi-automatic firearms, but I’m not too pleased with how that was polled. They first asked about handguns, and then rifles and shotguns. They asked about semi-automatic firearms as a separate category, which probably greatly confused people into thinking it was something else other than ordinary rifles, shotguns and handguns. The vast majority of handguns sold today are semi-automatic, as well as large numbers of rifles and shotguns. It seems hard to believe support for ownership would be so divergent if people understood the question well.
A bill that allows any soldier, regardless of age, to be able to get a Florida Concealed Weapons Permit, has passed with a unanimous vote. Robb notes that means even the die hard anti-gun folks didn’t want to touch this one. Like I said, it’s hard for the anti-gun folks to find friends these days.
It’s amazing how many anti-gun people just can’t move on:
Many are smart enough to see through the fog of the National Rifle Association. Many understand that the Second Amendment mentions a “well-regulated militia†because the right to bear arms is only within that context.
It is mentioned only in the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights. Therefore its mention is purposeful and within this context when guaranteeing the right to keep and bear arms.
Nope, you lost this one. It’s done. Over. There’s no more debate. It’s not the National Rifle Association anymore, it’s the Supreme Court of the United States. There seems to be a concerted effort among our opponents to stick their heads in the sand and pretend they aren’t losing.
The man was riding his bicycle about 11 a.m. on the Thun Trail near the Bertolet Fishing Dock in West Reading when the boys knocked him off his bicycle, police said.
Two of the boys were assaulting the man when he pulled a handgun and shot them, police said.
The police arrest everyone, but released the 65-year old victim, and sent the uninjured kid to juvie. I’m going to guess the Berks County District Attorney is going to decline charges in this case, except for the juveniles. This isn’t Philly.
Strategically, the smartest opponents to the right to bear arms are now based out of the offices of a billionaire in New York City. The folks who are headquartered in Washington, DC have been on the decline.
But here’s what I find interesting. Sebastian noted that the National Gun Victims Action Council are “a particularly whacked out fringe group” based on their very bizarre claims and goals. First of all, they carry this warning in large red letters on their website:
CAUTION Whenever you hear ANYTHING about guns that seems appealing, reasonable or factual KNOW IT IS PROBABLY NOT TRUE. For the facts contact us at: info@gunvictimsaction.org
Second, they really do work on the assumption that every person in the U.S. should be a presumed future criminal with claims like this: Fact: Every criminal was once law abiding citizen.
Third, instead of the standard Brady talking points that they don’t actually want to come for our guns, NGAC outright admits their goal is to come take our guns away: Any sane gun law will lead to the government being able to take your guns away.
What’s interesting is that their boycott is not based on the idea that they don’t want to be around gun owners while they enjoy their scones and frappuccinos, it’s actual goal is to force Starbucks to donate to NGAC. To end the boycott will require Starbucks ban all guns from its stores—and become a major supporter of policies to reduce gun violence. In other words, banning guns isn’t enough. They will demand that corporations line the pockets of the leaders of this group in order to end the boycott.
But here’s the very interesting thing about the National Gun Victims Action Council: They are the Brady Campaign.
From their Board biographies:
In other words, out of 16 people listed on NGAC’s board, 13 are in the Brady Campaign leadership. Most are state leaders, but several are national leaders.
So, given that this new unofficial arm of the Brady Campaign is turning towards a mission of embracing extreme gun control & extended boycotts, it looks like the folks who recognize at least some limits of Heller & McDonald have been run out of the organization. This suddenly makes much more sense when it comes to Helmke’s departure. Whereas he probably didn’t think it was wise to keep spending money trying to promote boycotts and petition drives to private corporations that weren’t working, they don’t want to relent. When he conceded that Heller took door-to-door confiscation off the table for the time being, they don’t consider that limitation to be within the realm of sanity. Certainly, this explains a lot of the odd behavior we’ve seen out of what was once the dominant gun control organization in the country over the last year and a half.
Josh Sugarmann and the VPC were always a little out there, but Sugarmann has always been more honest about his end goals than many of his counterparts, and he was a man willing to do his homework on the issue. For a while he was the brains of the gun control movement.
But now VPC wants to take personally owned firearms away from soldiers because they might hurt themselves with it. Yeah, that’s a message I’d want to take front and center in front of the public as an example of the kind of common sense measures their movement thinks we need. This has about as much logic as suggesting that depressed doctors and pharmacists remove any medication from their medicine cabinet at home because the easy access means it’s too easy for them to deliberately OD.