Huge crowd of protesters escort out #Trump supporter at #ShutDownCityHallNYC pic.twitter.com/zHgD50mcXb

— Alexander Rubinstein (@AlexR_DC) August 1, 2016

Your future, coming soon near you.

(The video refuses to post, but please click on the underlined link.)

I watched a cop TV show where a White Guy snaps (always a White Guy) after losing his good job, losing his house and car, his wife divorcing him and he basically being penniless, but yet he manages to get his hands on a couple of brand new handguns, at least one full auto Uzi and a high-powered assault rifle with a scope that is worth more than all the guns combined.

Is there a Salvation Army of Guns for deranged White Guys I have not been informed about? You walk in, explain your situation and they give you all those wonderful tools of revenge for free?

I don’t check on them regularly and they go hypocritically stupid:

And they even changed their cover photo:

Even back then, The Narrative was set to ignore the fact that it was armed civilians who stepped up and kept Charles Whitman’s head down with their own personal rifles. It was this gunfire what allowed the killings to stop,  rescue of the wounded to begin and police to reach the top of the tower and take care of Whitman:

I will quote from Massad Ayoob:

He never comes right out and says it, but McNab seems to show some sympathy for armed citizens. Analyzing the Texas Tower massacre by Charles Whitman in 1966, he writes, “The body count was soon stacking up on the streets of Austin. Such was the frustration felt by police that they permitted armed civilians to join them in directing fire against the tower. Their role became invaluable, as was acknowledged by Texas Ranger Ramiro ‘Ray’ Martinez, in his later autobiography ‘They Call Me Ranger Ray.’”  It was Martinez who, along with brother Austin officer Houston McCoy, killed Whitman atop the tower. McNab quotes Martinez, “I was and am still upset that more recognition has not been given to the citizens who pulled out their hunting rifles and returned the sniper’s fire. The City of Austin and the State of Texas should be forever thankful and grateful to them because of the many lives they saved that day. The sniper did a lot of damage when he could fire freely, but when the armed citizens began to return fire the sniper had to take cover.”

Source: Massad Ayoob » 2010 » November » 13

But the lessons keep being ignored at the peril of the population. Politics trump common sense.

Oh, Apple.

A while back, the company dipped its toe into the #GunSense* arena by banning images of firearms from game previews inside its App Store, leading to hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue for developers of popular first-person shooters, side-scrollers, military-themed strategy games and, ultimately, Apple itself. Since money trumps phony morals, that particular policy was deep-sixed faster than a disarmed serf** on a French promenade.

Now, following news of Tim Cook’s $50,000-a-plate fundraising dinner for the most rabidly antigun Presidential candidate this side of ever, Apple’s taking its anti-rights acitivism one step further: The company is getting rid of the kinda-sorta-realistic revolver emoji and replacing it with a neon green water gun.

A freaking water gun!

From Popular Science:

On its website, Apple says it wants to “ensure that popular emoji characters reflect the diversity of people everywhere.” And with millions of people using emoji in their daily communications, even the smallest changes will have significant impacts on our conversations. Apple’s stances on emoji can’t help but have political ramifications, in other words.

In this case, the change to the squirt gun emoji comes two years after a social media campaign called #DisarmTheiPhone was launched by advocacy group New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, with the goal of pressuring Apple to drop support for the revolver emoji.

Previously, Apple was reported to have pressured the emoji masters of the universe —the Unicode consortium, an international standards body — to drop plans to add a rifle emoji to the set.

Derp.

OK, two things:

One, Popular Science is attributing this decision to the wrong entities, essentially declaring victory for the so-called #DisarmTheiPhone “movement” and its partner group NYAGV. In reality, #DisarmTheiPhone was and remains a trivial Twitter hashtag campaign that was abandoned about a week after it launched.

Similarly, the association alleged to be behind it likely had zero influence on Apple’s decision (potential Bloomberg puppet strings notwithstanding), as this is a change that’s been a long time coming for the California company. As noted, Apple is and has been consistently antigun, terrified of individual responsibility and self reliance in the interconnected world its future profits depend so dramatically upon. There is globalism, and there is tech globalism. It’s a tossup as to which version is more patently stupid.

Two, while this move will have no impact whatsoever on its PC purpose to “reduce gun violence,” it does have the rather insidious potential to make light of a serious matter in the minds of hundreds of millions of children and young adults the world over. See, water guns are toys. Kids point them at their friends and pull the trigger. But real guns — for which this naive nonsense will be substituted in the Pictionary-style communication that is emoji — are not toys. Far from it, firearms are potentially dangerous tools, deadly to the innocent when used improperly. And that improper usage, on a very basic level, is all Apple is encouraging with this move. When Johnny 10-Year-Old, raised on emoji and iDevice, finds a bright green gun or some zombie-themed Hornady hollow-points, he might not take those things too seriously. Indeed, like all such efforts to censor firearms from public consumption, the sole upshot (hopefully not into some poor kid’s developing brain) is the creation and curation of ignorance. Abstinence — and that’s all this really amounts to — doesn’t make children safer. It makes the taboo more mysterious, more enticing, and less familiar. If you want your kid to get the clap, never teach them about sex. If you want your kid to get banged, never teach them about guns.

Of course, Apple will never truly put its money where its progressive advocacy is. The company won’t ban games or apps where guns feature prominently, and you’ll still be able to buy John Wick and Deadpool from iTunes. Better, you’ll continue to have access to great firearms resources, retail stores, and auction sites through iOS’ Safari browser. Sure, you could protest this decision and boycott Apple (knowing, of course, that Google and Microsoft and Amazon et al. are no better on gun rights), but there is no more poignant mockery of such half-hearted #GunSense than to use the very tools built by these various anti-rights companies against them. Hell, I’m writing this post on an iPad, and I just used my iPhone to order 4000 rounds of remanufactured 124-grain 9mm JHP from Freedom Munitions.

Anyways, now that Apple has banned the scary, deadly, mass-murder-promoting cartoon handgun from its emoji lineup, I think it’s only fitting — and morally consistent — that the company also honor the hundreds of thousands of yearly victims whose deaths are likewise “represented” in the standard emoji alphabet. That is to say, as far as I can tell, Apple at the very least must now get rid of the following:

⚡️ ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ✈️ ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ⛪️ ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

Lightning, explosions, junk food, booze, vehicles, greed, hammers, bombs, knives, tobacco, pills, drugs, drownings, hospitals, doctors, houses of worship, various deadly critters, and hands and feet take countless lives annually, together (and many even separately) dwarfing the roughly 2000 innocents killed each year with firearms.

Worse, if one utilizes emoji combinations, one can get mighty specific about some mighty terrible events. Consider ✈️?? or ?? or ??‍?‍?‍??. How delightfully subversive! We all probably know someone who’s been killed by ??, too. And just recently, ??? made the news.

Looking at that last icon above, a thought occurs: nothing has been more responsible for killing more innocent people over the last (insert huge number here) years than government. Thus, I expect Apple to firmly and boldly address the number-one killer of man in their next update and ban these odious symbols:

?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ??

I just have one more thing to say:

?***

Footnotes:

*A blending of the term “gun control” and the word “nonsense.”

**I am aware that “disarmed serf” is a redundancy. I just happen to like the way it sounds.

***I dont know if Apple added this emoji for its users or for itself. Both seem appropriate. Up mine? Up yours, Cook and Co.

Via  Greg Ellifritz. Everything happens on the top half of the screen.

I can’t tell for certain and I wish we could have access to the autopsy report, but it seems not surprisingly) that it was a shot to the head at very uncomfortable close range what finally stopped the attack.

When I began training in firearms, one of the things that I was taught was defending against a man armed with a knife. First thing I was told was to put a lot of distance and have some physical object in between the attacker and my body. Lacking that and if attacked, you were to sidestep the bad guy to the side opposite where he had his knife once he got somewhat close to you. The idea was that the inertia of the forward movement would be big enough for the attacker to have a much difficult time reacting and trying to change directions. On the other hand, sidestepping is faster and you are the one doing the action. Action always beats reaction.

And goes without saying that you must place effective shots on the attacker. Other than that, you are just doing a dance with a nutcase wanting to kill you.

My take (yours may vary according to the local laws) is that if a violent person is displaying a knife, your first movement must be at least drawing your weapon and putting distance between you and him. Maybe he will see the wisdom of stopping his actions, but that is a bet that I am not willing to pay with my life. The attacker in the video knew he was going after an armed person and still did not stop him from attempting to kill him.

According to the FBI, in 2014 there were 1,567 homicides and 124,380 Aggravated Assaults by Knives or cutting instruments. But what is interesting from the FBI stats is that although homicide by firearms far surpasses homicides by knives, there is only a small difference between them when it comes to aggravated assault: 138,336 by firearms.

Inevitably somebody ignorant will come around and say being wounded by a knife is not as bad as being shot and that we are better off without guns and blah-blah:

I beg to differ.

… being anally raped in jail, then prosecuted for instigating an asshole and then get into a fist fight with him, hurts a lot.

[fbvideo link=”https://www.facebook.com/molonlabeind/videos/1204573642906815/” width=”700″ height=”600″ onlyvideo=”1″]

Extra points for recording the episode and giving the prosecutor evidence against him.

Ego will get you in trouble with Life and Law faster than anything else.

Hat Tip to Sean Sorrentino.