Assorted Links On Guns

In no special order. Here's Tbogg:

We’re tired of lunatics bursting into schools and slaughtering screaming 6-year-olds with assault weapons.

We’re tired of weekend warriors strutting around Home Depot looking for toilet plungers while dressed like they’re setting out on a midnight raid to capture Osama bin Laden; AR15 at the ready in case someone jumps the line at the self-check out.

We’re tired of heavily-armed home-schooled Constitutional scholars who steal or occupy property belonging to all Americans because… freedom. They’re not patriots, they’re gun-packing thieves — and not very bright ones at that.

But mainly we’re tired of dying from gunshot wounds.

Tom had the deaths at my next link at 157. It's at 205 when I just looked. It'll pretty much rise by the minute though, so look fast. Another link from that piece contains a wealth of studies refuting the stupidity of ho so much. 

Lots of good stuff there, but just to point out two stories: 

Despite the astronomical odds against being killed, this fear of home invasion often drives people like Becca Campbell of Ferguson, Missouri, to gun ownership. This past November, Campbell was riding home in a car with her boyfriend after purchasing a gun, preparing for the unrest expected to follow the grand jury decision about whether to pursue criminal charges against the policeman who killed Michael Brown. She joked that “we’re ready for Ferguson,” waving the gun. Distracted, the boyfriend ran into the car ahead of them, and the gun fired, killing Campbell.

And:

In light of the overwhelming evidence that guns are a public health threat, gun advocates often retreat to an “it could never happen to me” mentality. This worldview is tragically mistaken. Consider the case of Veronica Dunnachie. She was, by many gun advocates’ definition, a good gal with a gun. A strident voice for gun rights, she was an open carry advocate, dedicated to expanding the unlicensed open carrying of firearms. In Texas, open carry is currently restricted to long guns; she pushed to include handguns. She frequently attended rallies and protests organized by Open Carry Tarrant County (an offshoot of Open Carry Texas). In a domestic dispute on Dec. 10, she allegedly shot and killed her husband and stepdaughter.Horrified, Dunnachie called a friend, telling him she “had just done something bad” and, at his urging, checked herself into a nearby mental health clinic.

To just end on a light note:

Black Op Arms owner Mark Limoges showed up for his interview with CNN sporting a special edition AR-15 like one that the company had recently presented to Trump.

“This is an exact replica of the gun we gave Mr. Trump,” he explained. “It has our Black Ops Arms symbol on it with our Black Ops Arms symbol on the handrail. And the other side, we have the ‘Live Free or Die’ with the American flag on the handrail.”

For the remainder of the five minute interview, Limoges continued to hold the weapon across his chest, pointing it upwards.

He's going to make them pry it from his cold, dead fingers.

“Most of the people that come in [to the gun store] are real nervous about what Mr. Obama is going to do to limit their chances of getting weapons,” he said.

That's because they're nuts who listen to propagandists. 

Link to a piece on Chris Gibson, gun fetishist for governor. Shout to Kathleen Parker: 

It is one thing to be in the pocket of the National Rifle Association. It is another to do nothing and then assume a superior posture of purposeful neglect, as though do-nothingness were a policy and smug intransigence a philosophy.

That's beautiful. I'm going to definitely steal that.