GARDEN VALLEY, Idaho (KBOI) – The Garden Valley School District is arming itself and a handful of staff members with guns in case of potential security threats moving forward.

According to the district’s school board minutes, the district has purchased four rifles and 2,000 rounds of ammunition.

The district is also considering spending up to $2,000 to purchase extra magazine rounds and body armor vests, according to school board documents. Each rifle was purchased for $680.

“We just have to protect our kids and we didn’t want to do it in a haphazard way,” Marc Gee, Garden Valley School District superintendent, told KBOI Friday

Garden Valley School Dist. buys rifles, will warn visitors building is ‘armed’

No whining, no posing for CNN, not being take in a tour to be used as political tools, not crying to the heavens and demand that rain be banned because thy get wet.

You come to our school to do our kids harm, we will kill you.

Now we need to make this contagious.

Hat Tip Dan R. and Greg T.

The New York Times published an article by David Brooks that wasn’t terrible.  That is the best praise I can give it.

Respect First, Then Gun Control

This has been an emotional week. We greet tragedies like the school shooting in Florida with shock, sadness, mourning and grief that turns into indignation and rage. The anger inevitably gets directed at the N.R.A., those who support gun rights, and the politicians who refuse to do anything while children die.

That last sentence went off the rails in a hurry.

Many of us walked this emotional path. But we may end up doing more harm than good. If there’s one thing we’ve learned, it is that guns have become a cultural flash point in a nation that is unequal and divided. The people who defend gun rights believe that snobbish elites look down on their morals and want to destroy their culture. If we end up telling such people that they and their guns are despicable, they will just despise us back and dig in their heels.

Believe me, I’ve been hearing it all week how “the NRA is a terrorist organization,” we have “blood on our hands,” and we are part of a child killing “culture of death.”  Oh yeah, and you want to kill us.

You hate us, we know it.

So if you want to stop school shootings it’s not enough just to vent and march. It’s necessary to let people from Red America lead the way, and to show respect to gun owners at all points. There has to be trust and respect first. Then we can strike a compromise on guns as guns, and not some sacred cross in the culture war.

That’s a nice sentiment.  Most of us are still not going to give into the gun control ideas you are pushing, but not treating legal gun owners like we were the ones pulling the trigger in Parkland is a start.

The article goes on the discuss a program called Better Angels which is a bipartisan group that tries to get more open debates between the Left and Right by moderating the name calling and extreme rhetoric.

The article ends with this.

We don’t really have policy debates anymore. We have one big tribal conflict, and policy fights are just proxy battles as each side tries to establish moral superiority. But just as the tribal mentality has been turned on, it can be turned off. Then and only then can we go back to normal politics and take reasonable measures to keep our children safe.

So the in-a-nut-shell summary of this was “lets stop calling gun owners baby killers and try to work with them a little bit.”

How did the intelligent and socially conscience readers of the New York Times take it?

Poorly.  Each of these comments was from the New York Times editor top picks.

Many gun owners support the kinds of controls that are advocated to reduce gun violence and death. The NRA doesn’t because they believe it will limit the sales of the gun manufacturers that keep the NRA in business. This isn’t tribal. It’s citizens who support safe and responsible gun ownership against an organization that thinks their clients profits are more important than the bullets fired into someone’s child or parent. Maybe, first, people like Brooks should stop making this a conservative vs liberal thing and acknowledge it’s a public safety thing.

Ah yes, the “the NRA doesn’t represent most gun owners” appeal to popularity argument.  To be honest, I don’t care about Fudds.  They are a hair above Quislings.  “Don’t take my O/U skeet gun but take his AR” is bullshit.  That is the equivalent of agreeing with speech codes because you have nothing controversial to say.  The Second Amendment protects military style arms for the same reason the First Amendment protects unpopular speech.

Also, the NRA isn’t in the business of selling guns.  It is member supported.  This idea that the NRA needs gun manufactures to sell to stay “in business” borders on conspiracy theory status about “the gun lobby.”

Lastly, this guy learned nothing.  “It’s citizens who support safe and responsible gun ownership against an organization that thinks their clients profits are more important than the bullets fired into someone’s child or parent” is exactly the type of sentiment Brooks warned against.  NRA members support the NRA for fighting against gun restrictions, not the NRA leading its members around by the nose.

As a young man, I hunted with my father. I took an NRA hunter safety course in the 1960’s and still own an old rifle. But I left the NRA a long time ago.

Mr. Brooks is very thoughtful and I respect his opinions. But it’s the radical right that promoted the politics of personal destruction. Surveys have proven that Trump supporters tend toward racist views. The Republican Party has cultivated racial hostilities among working class whites for years. Remember Reagan’s state’s rights speech in Philadelphia Mississippi? The politics of division did not begin on the left.

I live in gun country and have many conservative friends. We don’t talk politics much. But when we do, I discover that their news sources give them a different set of facts than I obtain from the New York Times. That makes any discussion and agreement difficult. It’s very hard to agree ( or respect) with a birther.

But Mr. Brooks has some excellent points. America will never heal until BOTH sides of the divide begin to listen with respect to the other side. However, don’t expect the NRA to participate or change their positions.

A Fudd that hates Trump, thinks Trump supporters are racist, the Right is to blame for all the problems, and the NRA is intractable, which is bad.

It all boils down to respect. No one will listen to you if you don’t show respect. I have the good fortune to live in a largely but not exclusively blue world and work in a largely but not exclusively red one. My good friends, both red and blue, share values about most things, including abortion, guns, health care and environment. My red friends and I know how each feels about Donald Trump. We discussed him during the election. But not now. They still like him and my feelings are well summarized by Charles Blow. There’s really no point in having a discussion about the man named Donald Trump. Take his name away and we do just fine. To his supporters Trump is not an embodiment of political philosophies and actions, he is an avatar of pent up rage rising from fly-over disrespect. Respect can weaken the avatar enough that he and his kind will lose not just the next election, but the next generation of elections. Democrats take note.

Finally, I have to say I’ve been deeply annoyed that “Don’t Tread on Me” was taken by the Reds. Since that icon was absconded by the right I chose to plant the Liberty Tree as my icon of fealty to the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. But the last year has brought a more potent symbol to the fore and I may soon switch to the Stature of Liberty.

“I don’t have to show the Right respect because TRUMP!!!”  Also, “I don’t understand what DTOM means.”

‘It’s necessary to let people from Red America lead the way, and to show respect to gun owners at all points. There has to be trust and respect first.’

Respect, Mr Brooks? With all due respect, respect is not a right. Respect has to be earned. Respect has to be won.

Respect is not the same as courtesy. We can be courteous to someone we despise.

Nor is respect the same as toleration, compromise, give and take, or understanding. To reduce gun deaths, we will have to tolerate much that is intolerable, compromise much of what we hold dear, concede much high ground to our adversaries, and understand our enemies.

But we do not have to respect them.

“I read your article but I hate the Right/Red States/GOP/Trump so much I’m not going to let it shift me from my hatred and I’m going to blame them for it.”  That and unearned moral superiority.

A difficulty in this discussion is conflating talking about “guns” with serious proposals to “ban AR-15s.” The gun lobby and people who vote the NRA agenda are effective in keeping the conversation muddied so that conversations about background checks or banning semi-automatic weapons become shrill claims that “they” are coming to take away people’s guns. It’s a purposeful distortion of the policy discussion. The people in the “red” tribe may be decent law abiding nice people. But they have a cognitive dissonance problem in that they continue to vote for representatives who are not nice people and who care little about doing anything for their or their children’s safety. I have no sympathy for the red tribe’s hurt feelings when their fanaticism about guns is highlighted. Their hurt feelings pale in light of the lifelong pain that is felt by survivors and loved ones of people killed by AR-15s, the weapon of choice of terrorists and troubled people who shoot up schools, concerts, churches, and movie theaters. Yes, we should all be a lot kinder to each other, and that loving kindness should extend to voting for officials who will champion reduction of weapons used in mass shootings. Maybe the red tribe feelings should include acting on empathy for the devastating, life-long pain of the shooting victims’ families by banning the weapon used over and over again in these mass shooting events.

“We’re not going to ‘take’ your guns (except we want to ban them and have a mandatory buy back).  All the problems with the gun debate are with the Red side because a person can’t support owning an AR and kids at the same time.  They must not have any ethics.  Good people should vote for Blue candidates only because voting for Red people makes you unkind.”

David. There is no respect possible for the private ownership of military weapons. We must ban semi-automatic weapons.

Really it’s quite that simple.

What did I just say about not wanting to take people’s guns?

There is a wonderful solution for all those ‘Patriots’ who insist on fulfilling their need to use machine guns built for mass murder: join the military. Yes, that is what the Second Amendment actually addresses: “a well regulated militia”. 

And then, ‘Patriot’, once you are out of the military you must leave the machine guns with the military where they belong. Also, you will no longer be piloting nuclear armed bombers. Those, too, must stay with the military – sorry!

But the good news is that there are military recruiting stations in every county, and joining the military can be a lifetime career, so, Patriot, go for it!

“If you want guns, join the military.”  First of all, many gun owners did.  Second, don’t question our patriotism.  Implying that people want to join the military or own guns because they want to murder others is just horribly offensive to our troops.  Lastly, the part about the militia being only the formal standing army is historically inaccurate to the point were even SCOTUS disagreed.

This is also ableist.  I guess if someone who isn’t physically capable of military service can’t have their Second Amendment rights?

This comment is just a hot mess of every anti-gun, anti-military Leftist ideology.

What absolute tripe. My respect for Brooks has gone down the tubes. The Gun Lobby is out of control and has the majority of the GOP in their pockets. “Respect” for gun owners rights is a false issue, this is about reigning in one of the most destructive forces in our society. Assault weapons cross the line from average gun ownership and should be banned altogether. I’ll take anger and insistence that this madness be stopped over the unnecessary loss of life in our schools and in our society in general (think Las Vegas and Pulse for example) anytime.

“I’m so biased and tribalist that I now hate a person I once liked for saying that we shouldn’t  demonize the people I hate.”

The lives of American children are a bipartisan issue.

Guns kill. Take the guns away, and then we can all talk about getting along.

The NRA has become a terrorist organization: my definition of terror is that children–mine and yours–are terrified of going to school. This does not occur in countries that have sane gun control laws. Who have we become?

“Our side is for the children, the other side is terrorists.”

These are actual replies from New York Times readers.  These are supposed to be the news reading elite.  They were not going to be moved from their entrenched bias and hatred.  They were going to keep on going on with all the same anti-gun, anti-GOP, anti-Trump that they did before.

They learned nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  Nothing.

How can they even begin to have a conversation with someone on the other side if they can’t even listen to someone from their own side telling them how to start having a conversation with the other side?

I’ll be honest, this is where I start to think that a national “amicable divorce” is our future.  We can be three nations, The North East Corridor, Middle America, and The Pacific Coast States.

I don’t want a civil war.  That would be terrible.  But if the people of New York and California can’t even stomach the idea of Red America being something other than baby killers and child murderers, than how do we move forward from this?

The New York Times published and article titled How Banks Could Control Gun Sales if Washington Won’t.

In the aftermath of the school shooting in Parkland, Fla., that killed 17 students and staff members — and at a time when Washington shows little interest in limiting the sales of assault weapons — there’s a real opportunity for the business community to fill the void and prove that all that talk about moral responsibility isn’t hollow.

Here’s an idea.

What if the finance industry — credit card companies like Visa, Mastercard and American Express; credit card processors like First Data; and banks like JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo — were to effectively set new rules for the sales of guns in America?

The author didn’t know that back in 2016, Wells Fargo actually did that to Hogue.  PayPal and Square did the same thing.

PayPal, Square, Stripe and Apple Pay announced years ago that they would not allow their services to be used for the sale of firearms.

“We do not believe permitting the sale of firearms on our platform is consistent with our values or in the best interests of our customers,” a spokesman for Square told me.

Now the author wants the rest of the banking industry to do the same.

If Mastercard were to do the same, assault weapons would be eliminated from virtually every firearms store in America because otherwise the sellers would be cut off from the credit card system

There is precedent for credit card issuers to ban the purchase of completely legal products. Just this month, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Bank of America banned the use of their cards to buy Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

To be clear: Those three banks won’t let you use your credit card to buy Bitcoin, but they will happily let you use it to buy an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle — the same kind of gun used in mass shootings in Parkland; Newtown, Conn.; San Bernardino, Calif.; Las Vegas; and Sutherland Springs, Tex.

Bitcoin is used in the international trade of drugs, guns, contraband, even human slaves.  This is very different than the legal purchase of a legal product in the US.  To equate a crypto-currency used to fund terrorism and in money laundering with buying a rifle at Cabela’s is morally repugnant.

But what else would you expect from the NYT?

Visa, oddly enough, is the card of choice of the N.R.A.: There is actually an N.R.A.-branded Visa card issued by First Bankcard, a division of First National Bank of Omaha. And Mastercard proudly announced last year that it was the branded card for Cabela’s, an outdoor gear megastore with a seemingly limitless assault-weapon catalog.

And I have over $300 in Cabela’s points.  I prefer them to air miles.  I hate to travel, I use my kids day care bills to buy ammo for IDPA matches.

If Visa and Mastercard are unwilling to act on this issue, the credit card processors and banks that issue credit cards could try. Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, which issues credit cards and owns a payment processor, has talked about how he and his bank have “a moral obligation but also a deeply vested interest” in helping “solve pressing societal challenges.” This is your chance, Mr. Dimon. 

And here’s a variation on the same theme: What if the payment processing industry’s biggest customers — companies like McDonald’s, Starbucks, Apple, Amazon, AT&T, CVS and others that regularly talk about “social responsibility” — collectively pressured the industry to do it? There’s a chance that some of the payment processors would stop handling gun sales. Perhaps their voices would help push one of the banks to step out and lead?

It is amazing how fast the Left went from Occupy Wall Street “big banks are bad” to “lets use the big banks for social change.”

Another critique is that it is impossible to prevent every shooting, no matter how guns are restricted. And the banks’ actions would affect millions of their own law-abiding customers, effectively dictating what they can and cannot buy.

That is all true.  But to him, the inconvenience to gun owners is more of a feature than a bug.

The most troubling aspect of having the finance industry try to restrict gun sales is that it would push the most dangerous guns into an untraceable world where sales would depend on cash. That’s true. All things considered, though, it would make it considerably harder to even find such guns.

This moron has no idea how much of the gun world is already a cash business.  Cash is king.

None of this is a panacea. But it’s a start. It takes leadership and courage — exactly what these executives say they have. If they don’t want to back up their words with actions, the next time there’s a school shooting that prompts a conversation about gun companies, it should also include the financial complex that supports them.

Ultimately, what this idiot wants is the banks to be our moral betters.  He wants the banks to have control over our lives, approving what we buy and how we live.

Putting that kind of power in the hands of banks is horrifying.  Will the environmentalists convince the banks not to finance SUVs, trucks, or non-fuel efficient vehicles?  What about alcohol or tobacco or any other industry.  There are diamonds that still come from slave mines in Africa, maybe we can organize the banks to stop dealing with the jewelry industry.  The iPhone is made by Chinese slaves, with coltan dug by African slaves.  Maybe banks should end all financial ties to and not process sales with Apple.

The thing is, this would be all but useless.  There is always cash, but there is a lot more than cash available.   I’ve bought guns with gold fillings when the price of gold shot up over $1,500/oz and the local pawn and gun was buying gold at a premium.

Then there is entrepreneurship.  PayPal only dates back to 1998.  Please for the love of fuck pull the banking industry out of gun sales.

In 2015, the firearms and ammunition industry did $13.5 billion in sales, and gun stores did $3.1 billion. 

I got a buddy on Wall Street I can get backing from.  I will create online gun sales processing dotcom – and rake in my cut of that money.

But it’s that $13.5 billion that is the answer.  Are the banks really going to give that up?  Ruger did over $400 million in sales last year.  Remington did $700 million.  Vista Outdoors did $2.5 billion.

Is the whole of the banking industry going to walk away from that much money?

I doubt it.  If they do, the rush to replace it will happen overnight.

The Left is pulling out all the stops after Parkland.  There is no idea too absurd that they won’t suggest.

This one is bad, but it will get worse.

Just a quick note to remind you to contact your Representative to thank him or her for her vote shutting down the AWB. Today they will be taken a beating in the Media and our notes of support are important so they feel they have back up and not give up in the future.

You can locate and email your Representative clicking HERE.

If your Rep did not vote the right way, contact is also necessary as reminder to do the right thing.

Again, here is the list.

I would have to ask, who do we know in the gun control community can pop, in short time, buses and black SUV to transport around his minions. It would have to be somebody with money and influence like a former mayor of a big city of the North East.

Damn, who could that be?

I was chatting with my buddy over at The Bull in Miami.

Alabama is still very solidly pro gun.  The news of Remington and now Kimber moving to Alabama was met with excitement and welcome.

My buddy in Miami says that people are looking over their shoulders there.

The anti-gun hysteria after Parkland is hitting resonance with the anti-Trump #Resistance and is getting out of hand.

Some people can try and walk back how “Kill the NRA” is just a statement about money in policts, but we all know that it’s bullshit.

I fear Parkland is the one that breaks us.  Not because of Parkland but because it is the Resistance’s Reichstag fire around which all of their hatred of Trump and the GOP can coalesce into something dangerous.

Be careful out there.

San Francisco is a third world sewer.

The NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit surveyed 153 blocks of downtown San Francisco in search of trash, needles, and feces. The investigation revealed trash littered across every block. The survey also found 41 blocks dotted with needles and 96 blocks sullied with piles of feces.

As the Investigative Unit photographed nearly a dozen hypodermic needles scattered across one block, a group of preschool students happened to walk by on their way to an afternoon field trip to city hall.

“We see poop, we see pee, we see needles, and we see trash,” said teacher Adelita Orellana. “Sometimes they ask what is it, and that’s a conversation that’s a little difficult to have with a 2-year old, but we just let them know that those things are full of germs, that they are dangerous, and they should never be touched.”

In light of the dangerous conditions, part of Orellana’s responsibilities now include teaching young children how to avoid the contamination.

America’s second most expensive city with its $400,000 shacks, is a cesspool of HIV and Hepatitis.

So here is my opinion for the day:

I am no longer going to accept lectures on how to keep guns off our streets from people who can’t keep human shit and drug needles off of their streets.  Full stop.