The Price of Getting Involved

I’ve been following the bears in Minnesota since I heard about them on Prairie Home Companion.

Today, the update was that a 3 year old female with an identification collar was shot and killed:

Gentle Jo was killed in Soudan, MN, last evening.  She made it into the forest before collapsing on the run from a shot through a lung.

Shoot first.  That’s it.

I don’t think that type of mentality will change in this country before I die.  I just hope that I can follow this little family for a year or so without any of them getting shot.

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My Dream

That this country could wake up from its gun fetish.

The gun industry,  its manufacturers, ammo producers and its advocates eat up enough money to stamp out many societal ills, but all of the money is wasted on toys people will only ever shoot at a target at a gun range.  They should all go the way of the carriage:  just a novelty of fake wild west shows.  Let the real entertainers — the thespians — take over to show us how it was in the day.

Having a handgun didn’t seem to help Michael Berry.

Let’s Talk About Guns

Yesterday I heard someone wax prolific on the idea of gun regulation.  His point was that things are dangerous.  If we outlaw one thing (guns) that is dangerous, we should outlaw everything that is dangerous.

Read this.

And then read this.

This will not work out nicely.  Rabid second amendment screamers, as well as those who rallied  to the 2nd amendment remedies, will have to answer for their rhetoric.

Call me naive, but I think the gun talk will fade and mayors against guns will win the day.

 

Town Hall Meetings and Conceal Carry

Linkless post for now, but I’ve just got to say that any politician who holds a town hall in Texas is just crazy.  Looking at the Doggett video made me cringe.

And today, the wingnuts — Kathleen and Michael Berry — just raise the crazy to an unbearable level.

It’s a toss up whether FLA or TX will be the first place that a politician gets threaten with a gun (and hopefully survives it).

I get it.  Lots of people are sour about the election results — more this time than last.  Just CALM DOWN please.

Long Weekend’s Eve Eve

Tomorrow is like Friday because we have a field trip to NASA on Friday and then there’s that sweet Monday holiday.  Yes, I’m looking forward to it.  I can leave the mundane of looking for my insurance card and the number for the roofer (I thought that was a done deal, but no!).  I can also have a break from students, which I need after this week.

One of my students lost control this week and thankfully when I kicked said student out of my class, there was a positive resolution.  I don’t know the student very well, so when that student started yelling in class, I was a little worried.  It made me think of an article I had read at the Houston Chronicle about the bill that is working it’s way through the Texas Legislature to allow people to carry guns on campus.  When people whohave no classroom experience want to add guns to campuses, I always wonder why.  If someone has never had a student go off inexplicably, then it’s impossible to know what it’s like.  Do they really think that advertising that people can have guns on campus will reduce the possibility of violence?  Giving examples of small mostly rural schools doesn’t cut it.  At least if it happens now, I can be fairly sure that the student won’t have a gun.  From what  I can tell, the bill doesn’t have much of a chance in the House.  I can only hope.

Frank Luntz (?) is on Letterman talking about the Volt.  Dave is trying to buttonhole him on the electric car, but Luntz is no fool.  This is why we have no choices and the auto industry is in trouble.

I’ve got to take more pictures of the kittens and get geared up to send them off to new homes.  They are growing up in so many ways, though they still have that “group think” thing going on.

Lastly, Criminal Minds was creepier than usual tonight.

More Needless Gun Stupidity

I missed this one on the local news, but please, can everyone stop shooting people and asking questions later?

The Texas Senate has Nothing Better to Do

This pisses me off.  Hopefully it will die in the committee.  Oh and, surprise surprise, Dan Patrick, the local wingnut who moved just so he could get elected and politic for himself all the time on his radio station, is a sponsor of the bill.

There is no reason for anyone to have a gun on campus, except for the campus police.  There is no reason for me or anyone else to trust someone who has taken a “course” on gun safety to not go off and shoot someone.  Seriously, look at this dilettante.  Do you want a person like that anywhere near a university campus with a gun?  (Especially someone who has photoshopped her pic?)

Clearly I will be following this, and if it goes any further, I’ll be making some noise.

Ok, Dallas Wins

For the longest time, Houston has had an inferiority complex.  Dallas has always gotten all of the attention.

I have hated Dallas all my life, almost as most as California.  But they one-upped us today and good for them.  According to the local CBS news, more than 200 people turned in their guns for a grocery coupon.

Yes indeed.

All those transplanted southern strategy types who have decided that they needed to stock up on guns otherwise Obama will take them away, take note.  You aren’t winning that argument either.

I have a mind to call that Gun Man tomorrow while I work on my lawn or finish painting the living room — you know things people do instead of worring about who is going to try to kill them or take their toys away.

That guy also had this “radical” idea.  He thinks gun types should leave gun related magazines in doctors’ and dentists’ offices.  It’s his brilliant idea.

An Interesting Link about Guns and Obama

I came across this in a comment thread at another blog.  It’s looks like some sort of clearinghouse for paranoid gun owners.

Sunday Afternoon Radio

I previously wrote about a relatively new (since September) right wing talker on local radio on Sundays, Lores Rizkalla.  When her bit gets cut short, I’ve switched over to KTRH’s sister station, KPRCfor nationally sindicated Gun Talk.

Today Rizkalla only had an hour to talk about how she’s proud that the country elected a black president (her words), but that she still has problems with his policies and his associates (bringing up the right wing bogey men several times).  She eventually agreed with her callers that Obamagot elected because people wanted to votefor a black man (her words).  I am actually looking forward to following her.  She’s wing nut lite and doesn’t have any original ideas, but even still, she has potential to come out with some doozies.

The Gun Talkshow may get a little tiresome, but the website may have some interesting information.  The first thing I heard when switching stations was about Obama’stransition website.  The host, Tom Gresham, gave out a URL with a cached page from the site.  The information there, according to Gresham, is scandalous:

Address Gun Violence in Cities: As president, Barack Obama would repeal the Tiahrt Amendment, which restricts the ability of local law enforcement to access important gun trace information, and give police officers across the nation the tools they need to solve guncrimes and fight the illegal arms trade. Obama and Biden also favor commonsense measures that respect the Second Amendment rights of gun owners, while keeping guns away from children and from criminals who shouldn’t have them. They support closing the gun show loophole and making guns in this country childproof. They also support making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent, as such weapons belong on foreign battlefields and not on our streets.

So, why is it a cached and not live?  I don’t know, but Gresham thinks it’s because he started talking about it around 1:00 CST this afternoon. 

What’s to oppose in the policy statement?  Well, first off, Gresham agreed with his guest (didn’t catch the name, sorry) that local law enforcement already has access to all the information they need to trace guns and giving them any more access would just allow them to go fishing around in gun owners’ information.  Really?  That sound awfully paranoid to me.   Of course Gresham, as a part of the gun industry and stating that he has just returned from a gun show, doesn’t think there is a gun show loophole.  That just doesn’t comport with reality.  Gresham even mocked the idea of making guns childproof.

Here at the end of his show, Gresham is talking in ‘fighting’ terms about defeating elected officials at the ballot box, like 1994!!!!!11111!!!  WOLVERINES.

I can’t find a podcast yet, but I’ll keep looking.  Meanwhile, here’s a tidbit from the “Truth Squad”section of Gresham’s website:

School shootings in Virginia and Mississippi were stopped by students and a vice principal who ran to their cars and got guns. The shooters gave up when faced with someone who had a gun. At the Trolley Square shooting (in a mall) in Salt Lake City, Utah, an off-duty police officer had a gun in a “gun free” mall (I guess it wasn’t so gun-free after all). He distracted and delayed the shooter, saving lives.

There is a difference between feeling safe and being safe. You will hear people talk about wanting to feel safe. Offer the idea that it’s more important to actually be safe. The police are good, but they can’t be everywhere. Victims are everywhere, so they are the “first responders” to a crime.

“Gun Free” zones stop only honest people from having guns, making them less safe. If the idea is to get rid of all guns to make an area “safe,” then prohibit the police from carrying guns there. No? Because we know that a trained person with a gun can stop a murderer. Doesn’t matter if that person is wearing a uniform.

The school shooting in Virginia is not the one you probably first thought of, but rather this one.  Whether or not the armed students stopped any further deaths is disputed.  In the Mississippi shooting, the vice principal kept the shooter from leaving.  If Gresham can’t be honest in how he advocates his positions, why should he be taken seriously?