The New York Times Taco Stand.

Clayton Cramer’s “Lock, Stock, and Barrel: The Origins of American Gun Culture” is an intensely researched book. Mr. Cramer went to the source documents to dissipate any notions that popular gun ownership is a recent movement created by marketing geniuses of the NRA.

I had the honor and privilege of lending a small hand on this book transcribing a few letters from Samuel Colt and others and it was illuminating as hell. To give you an example, this is during the heyday of the Industrial Revolution. England is the top dog in the world while the US, although a newcomer, is still mostly an agricultural state.

This is the era of the birth of Communism, Luddites and a general dislike and even hate against Industrialist because of the worker’s conditions, low wages and Child Labor. But here comes one damned gringo named Samuel Colt who will open a gun manufacturing plant in London that must follow the same set up and conditions as the one he has back home. When it finally opens, the Intelligentsia at the time is amazed to see not only the great working conditions, but nice sleeping arrangements and even salaries that both male and female workers receive. Some even find amazing that Colt is able to deliver a high quality product and make a profit!

So yes, the book is a bit expensive, but just the research that Mr. Cramer put into it is very much worth that price.  Think of it as a reference book with a great narrative. And when you read the book, you will figure out that the money is well spent in more ways than just the information that provides you.

Clayton Cramer’s “Lock, Stock, and Barrel: The Origins of American Gun Culture”  is available in Amazon in both Kindle and Dead Tree editions.

Another rambling idiocy cooked by a Liberal:

The best thing for hunters would be the erosion of the National Rifle Association’s clout, which suddenly looks possible amid widespread protests calling for new gun laws.
This past fall, I needed a specific tool for my muzzleloader and blackpowder season was a few days out. My friend and I were running errands and finding said tool became a bit of an odyssey. We stopped at no less than four gun shops before giving up.

Alexander: NRA is a threat to hunting

He manage to brutally contradict himself in the first paragraph. Or more likely he is betting his readers are uninformed enough that his lies go unnoticed.

Let me start with the tool for his muzzleloader. Mr. Alexander apparently has not hear about this magnificent invention used by many to locate both items and people: The Telephone.  I don’t know you guys, but If I am gonna try to find some item locally and I know there are specific stores that may carry it, I rather dial the digits that jump in my car with a friend in tow and run around town looking for it. You know, the whole “Let your fingers do the walking.”? That one!

Next, raise your hand if you have gotten NRA notifications in your Email regarding Federal and State attempts to restrict or ban hunting… OK, Y’all can put your hands down.

From 1,000% tax on ammunition to banning any ammunition that uses lead, the Left has been trying without success to outright kill  hunting and the NRA has fought it every time. The continuous push to get lead regulated by the EPA under the Toxic Substances Control Act has come snake eyes every time because of the efforts of the NRA and not the goodness of the hearts of the D.C. politicians.

So, is there an issue with hunting? Are the numbers down from previous years? Yes. But the explanation lies somewhere else rather than the alleged secret campaign by gun store to drive hunters away according to Jon Alexander. I am just going to give you two reasons as not to make this post too long.

Population has shifted from rural areas to urban/suburban areas. According to the Census Bureau, in the 1910s, the population was almost evenly split between urban (45.6) and rural areas (54.4). By the 1990, it had turned 75.2% urban and 24.8% rural and now we stand at 80.7 percent urban versus 19.3 rural. Last I heard, hunting in Urban areas (although tempting in some cases) is forbidden by the law.  So a combination of lack of opportunity and descent of the rural population has influenced the decline in hunting. That unless Mr. Alexander wants to blame  the NRA on the abandonment of our rural areas.

Refrigeration, Supermarkets and an overall elevation of the standard of living. For many years hunting was not just a sport but the means to put protein on the family table. If you wanted to eat turkey at Thanksgivings, you had to get your shotgun and be lucky out there in the field rather than chasing Butterball in the aisles of your local supermarket.  Refrigeration meant your meat took a long time to spoil. The prices for steak and ground chuck dropped when it was no longer necessary to rush the transfer and processing of a cow to serve before it became a bed for maggots.  And the same applied to game caught in the hunt: once butchered, it no longer had to be processed (salted/smoked) but neatly packed and put in the bottom of the freezer and consume leisurely. And then come the lazy people like me that do not hunt and will obtain animal protein via the supermarket because it is more convenient.  Last I heard, the NRA does not have a stake in supermarkets nor sell refrigerators or freezers.

But hunting is not dwindling as much as they are trying to make it look. The members of Gun Culture 2.0 are starting to discover hunting and enjoying it. And not only doing so with muzzleloaders and other old-school military-style weapons, but with the evil AR 15 also.  There is a reason why AR-15 receivers are marked as multi caliber, right? And I hear the .50 Beowulf round will take most of the game found in the US.

We will never have the same percentage of hunters as we had 100 years ago, but I do predict (if the antis’ friends of Mr. Alexander do not get their way) that we will see their numbers increase but it is going to take time.

Hat Tip Armatus Rebellio‏ @ArmatusRebellio

The Hartford Courant published an article titles A fake photo of Emma González went viral on the far right, where Parkland teens are villains.

Well, yes, they are.

There has been a certain quality to having teenagers act as figureheads for a movement that has not gone unnoticed in the wake of the March for Our Lives rally on Saturday.

Judge too harshly and you are attacking a kid who has balanced trauma with homework. And amplifying students such as Emma González has injected optimism among liberal activists in the grinding debate about the role of guns in society.

See, they are human shields.  They can dish out outlandish shit but can’t take it because they are over worked kids.

González, 18, has been at the flash point of this dynamic, appearing in newspapers, on magazine covers and in a prominent spot at the anchor rally in Washington, D.C., where she went silent for the six long minutes it took a gunman at her high school in Parkland, Florida, to kill 17 people on Valentine’s Day.

Gun-control advocates have held up González as a figurehead of the movement, splashing her trademark shaved head on T-shirts and viral images.

Yes, she has been.  Now tell me why it’s wrong to criticize her.  She’s 18 now.  She’s an adult.  She can vote.  She can join the military and go over seas.  She can buy an AR-15 if she wants it.  She’s not a kid anymore.

Then, there is another viewpoint of her activism.

A doctored animation of González tearing the U.S. Constitution in half circulated on social media during the rally, after it was lifted from a Teen Vogue story about teenage activists. In the real image, González is ripping apart a gun-range target.

Justy a sample of what NRA supporters are doing to teenagers who survived a massacre (real picture on the right). pic.twitter.com/czX7IHD8ur

— Don Moynihan (@donmoyn) March 25, 2018

Well, when you say you don’t support the Second Amendment, don’t want groups like the NRA to donate money (protected speech), and want NRA TV blocked, it seems like you are pretty much anti everything that the Bill of Rights stands for.

The doctored image mushrooming across social media appeared to confirm the belief among Second Amendment absolutists that calls for stricter gun-control measures are sacrosanct, destroying the very foundation of the United States. The animation bounced around conservative Twitter before it received a signal boost Saturday from actor Adam Baldwin.

He tweeted to a quarter of a million followers with a hashtag reading “#Vorwärts!,” the German word for “forward” and an apparent reference to the Hitler Youth, whose march song included the word.

Her and Josef Goebbels Jr., it’s pretty fucking accurate.  Demonizing people who didn’t do anything, saying they have blood on their hands (the blood libel) for deaths they did not cause, and wanting to take away their civil rights sounds pretty Nazi to us.

Gab, the Twitter-like social network that is a popular refuge for the alt-right, tweeted the animation on Saturday to more than 100,000 followers, then hours later asserted it was “satire.” It racked up more than 1,200 retweets. The still images, looking more sophisticated than the glitchy animation, went further, appearing to be taken as legitimate by some conservative-minded Twitter users.

The pushback seems to have gained more traction than the original images, although with that comes more eyeballs on those. Donald Moynihan, a professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, debunked the altered image, saying in a tweet: “Just a sample of what NRA supporters are doing to teenagers who survived a massacre (real picture on the right),” referencing a user named “Linda NRA Supporter” who posted the photo and whose account has since been suspended. It garnered more than 65,000 retweets.

She was in another building far away from the shooting.  She has used that to get on every stage and platform she can to call NRA members child killers.  We’re not going to just roll over and play dead to that.

Generally, one form of criticism of González and fellow students such as David Hogg, 17, has been their ages. They are too naive and young to grasp the extent of how money, politics and policy intersect, the argument goes. It was cemented in the right’s criticism of Hogg’s insistence that clear backpacks would infringe on civil rights.

He’s an angry, ignorant teenager.  I was one once too.  The difference is I wasn’t on every media talking head show in the country with my bullshit.

Other elements of González have been used in an attempt to discredit her, online and off.

For instance, some in conservative circles have circulated images calling attention a Cuban flag sewn to her jacket.

“Emma Gonzales, wearing the flag of an authoritarian communist nation. Makes sense, they both hate an armed citizenry,” one meme shared on Reddit’s conservative page r/TheDonald. It was shared on social media through variations of the theme, including one by conservative commentator Andrew Wilkow. González’s father migrated from Cuba to the United States.

Pretty accurate.  The people I know who hate Communism the most are the old Cubans who fled it.  One of the greatest things I ever saw in my life was an old Cuban man in his guayabera and old man slacks, get up, hobble his way with a cane up to some punk in a Che shirt, and punch that snot nose kid in his stupid fucking face while yelling in Spanish.

Don’t wear a Che shirt around a man whose family was shot by Che’s goons.  He’s not so old he won’t kick your ass.

The right also has buttressed a self-identified conservative Parkland student who it thinks identifies with its politics – a de facto foil to his classmates. Kyle Kashuv, 16, visited President Donald Trump and five Republican U.S. senators just three weeks after the killings to offer alternatives in the debate.

“The initial movement, in its purest form, was amazing. It got corrupted because now it’s represented as anti-gun and anti-NRA. ‘Boycott this, boycott that.’ It’s detracting from the actual discussions,” Kashuv told The Washington Post about the work of his classmates.

Since then, Kashuv has been an occasional guest on Fox News Channel, sometimes calling for middle ground with fellow classmates and among those who disagree in the debate. Kashuv has echoed critics on the right that a focus on law-enforcement failures, not gun laws, is the way forward.

Maybe actually working with politicians rather than bragging about hanging up on the White House and calling Senators child murderers is the right way to approach school safety.

Hogg’s comments at the rally were “egregious and inflammatory,” Kashuv said on Fox News on Saturday, and he has criticized Hogg numerous times on Twitter. On Sunday, Kashuv challenged classmate Cameron Kasky to a debate. His argument has been bolstered by the NRA, which has published videos decrying Hogg’s use of explicit language and suggesting his activist classmates would be unknown if they were still alive, and saved by a gun-carrying officer.

Hogg is “egregious and inflammatory” and maybe someone should ask the kids at Great Mills if they like their SRO or if they’d rather have had the Coward County Sheriff.

Conservatives, who have often asserted high school students have limited understanding and legitimacy in the gun debate, have taken a shining to the Parkland student.

“You will include Kyle Kashuv in your story, yes?” Baldwin asked The Post in a direct message on Twitter.

Maybe there is a level of maturity difference that makes conservatives like Kashuv?

The Currant went all pissy over the fact that the Parkland kids they like aren’t being acquiesced to by conservatives.

I watched that March For Our Lives and a lot of the other crap that Emma Gonzales has done.

Hogg has said he won’t return to school until new gun legislation is passed.  Emma supposedly has gone back but is seen everywhere but school.

This is what they remind me of.

They are a bunch of kids who refuse to go back to school until they successfully strip civil rights away from people they do not like.

I, and the rest of right of center and liberty loving America, have every right to criticize that.

We’re not going to let you bash us over the head with crying children while telling us that we can’t defend ourselves from attack because they are children.

I was looking at some of the signs from the March For Our Lives.

It’s obvious that these people hate guns and gun owners.  It’s equally obvious that they love talking about genitalia.

Ha ha, yeah.  Like I haven’t heard the small penis thing before.  Though I’m not sure she is in a position to judge since it looks like she hasn’t seen one in about 40 years.

We’re going to see this “my *female part* is more regulated than guns” a lot.

One, not true.  Two, please don’t make me think about teenage girls uteruses.

Also, the “sadly we can’t ban angry white males” think is kinda racist.

For the hat trick.  This the problem with the Woman’s March protesting gun rights.

Correct. ?#MarchForOurLives pic.twitter.com/zUABgiObw2

— Never Again Movement (@NeverAgainMov) March 25, 2018

Right… because nobody wants to stand up to the NRA.  I figured standing up to a bunch of ignorant, screaming harpies that the media is turning into heroes took more balls.

Not my pictures but I think these posters deserve to be seen & things need to change‼️ #MarchForOurLives pic.twitter.com/6hiXfurzEN

— Verenice? (@Vereniceruizz) March 25, 2018

At least we graduated from uterus to the whole shebang.

This might just be my favorite #MarchForOurLives sign pic.twitter.com/f7pbutp5J4

— The Angry Democrat (@AngryDemdotcom) March 25, 2018

I think she is saying that she doesn’t have to know anything about guns to regulate them because politicians don’t know anything about female anatomy by regulate abortion.  I guarantee she is still one of the “no uterus no opinion” party.  What if I can name everything, will she go away?

I just think she wanted to carry around a picture of a uterus just because.

https://twitter.com/OmarNunez/status/978028319299067904

Let’s see here, this person wants to ban gun ownership because some kids got shot even though the overwhelming majority of gun owners have never an will never kill anyone. Yet it seems that she totally wants the right to kill an unborn child in her womb with no restrictions, and presumably on the tax payer’s dime.

Not to sound like a ultra right wing nut job, but in last year that I have firm data on this, the FBI reported roughly 8,500 firearm homicides while  the CDC reported over 644,000 abortions.

I don’t think that they have any moral high ground to speak from.

AR-15’s on demand and without apology.

When they are done talking about genitals, the will talk about sex.  Nothing makes them look loving tolerant, and compassionate more than invoking the Westboro Baptist Church.

https://twitter.com/BettyBowers/status/978399427701411840

Make up an insulting pathology.  Hate people they say have that pathology.

Remember that the people who didn’t love Communism were also pathological.

Or we could turn it around.  Doesn’t the A in LGBTQIA stand for ‘ammosexual?’

How dare you oppress me you bigoted shit-lord.  You are ammophobic.

It’s always the NRA’s fault when nothing gets done.

Or maybe it has something do with the fact that these people can’t talk for three minutes about anything without it being uterus/vagina/penis/perversion.

On the plus side, I have yet to see a picture with a woman in a labia costume.  At least someone realized that level of batshit insanity was bad optics for an anti gun march.

A #MarchForOurLives sign with an idea worth giving a try.#Enough #NeverAgain #NotOneMore #EnoughIsEnough #GunControlNow #MondayMotivation #VoteThemOut #GunControlNow pic.twitter.com/w5N93a814U

— Nick Walden Poublon (@NWPinPDX) March 26, 2018

What the fuck does that mean?

All I can think of is this scene from Mystery Men.

Dear New Yorker: you realize that old Joan was packing the most advanced weapons of the time, right?

Or maybe you mean you want to see Emma burn at the stake? Holy shit, I know your side is desperately looking for a Bloody Shirt event, but that might be too much.