Bloomberg’s spends some $1.1 Million to get Terry McAuliffe elected to Governor of Virginia.

Bloomberg and McAuliffe work in tandem to get a Democrat majority elected to the VA legislature, but fail badly.

McAuliffe, unilaterally goes after gun rights in the Commonwealth by stripping 25 states of concealed carry reciprocity.

VA Republicans then proceed to revolt, kick McAuliffe’s ass all over the front page of every political news paper in the country, and threaten to take away is protective detail.  Backing by Bloomberg is conspicuously absent.

McAuliffe tries to regain his compusure by distancing himself from Bloomberg’s anti-gun activities by calling Everytown “a group form New York.”  Which any Southerner will tell you is just the nice way of saying “those damn Yankee carpetbaggers.”

McAuliffe then tries a little more gun control in the form of a “deal,” but it is such watered down, weak tea, that it *might* have the barest chance of passing.  Bloomberg is so livid that the candidate they bought and paid for, talked back and is not delivering, that they have taken out ads against their puppet.

This is so juicy I want to stick a straw in it and take a drink.

Here are the lessons to learn:

1. Bloomberg/Everytown talk a big game when they think they are winning.
2. Bloomberg/Everytown vanish like a fart in a high winds when they start to lose.
3. Just because they supported you at election time, doesn’t mean they have your back during your term.
4. Bloomberg/Everytown demand absolute loyalty, even when they fail to be loyal in return.
5. Bloomberg/Everytown have no problem savaging their own.

To any politician in a swing state, who might be tempted to take some Bloomberg money.  Consider this:

You go over the guns, and gun owners come out of the woodwork and we put our money where our mouths are.  The public attitude on guns has shifted away from Bloomberg’s side, every mass shooting and terrorist attack causes more guns to be bought and more CCW permits to be applied for.  More states than no are backing down on gun control/liberalizing gun laws.  We will fight you tooth and nail on every inch of gun control legislation that you push, and Bloomberg wont have your back in that fight.  Gun owners hold a grudge and have long memories.

If you don’t believe me, see Colorado and Virginia.

In the mean time, I’m going to sit back and watch the Bloomberg/McAuliffe spat unfold like a Jerry Springer episode.

A man in Jupiter, Florida has been arrested for throwing an alligator through the Window of a Wendy’s drive-thru, and has claimed his action was a prank.

My favorite part of this story, is that he has been charged with assault with a deadly weapon.  Yes, an alligator is officially a deadly weapon.

It takes a Captive Wildlife Permit to legally possess an alligator in the State of Florida.

So begs the question, if you have a CWP and CCW, can you legally carry an alligator concealed for defensive purposes?

What would be the best way to carry a concealed alligator?  I for one would want some sort of strap around its mouth, removed with a thumb break to prevent accidental discharge mastication.

Alligators have between 74 and 80 teeth in their mouths, so would that be considered high capacity assault alligator by Everytown and Bloomberg crew?

How big can your alligator be before you have to register it as a destructive device?

I just can’t wait for the caliber wars on this one: alligator vs. crocodile.

Oh Florida, don’t you ever change…

I like Travis Haley.  He is one of the few shooting instructors that I’ve seen make videos that doesn’t look like a total, roided out, doofus from the John Woo school of shooting.  From the outtakes of the Magpul dynamics videos, he also seems like a really cool guy.  He was also Marine Recon, so you know he knows his stuff.

And just the other day, he had a negligent discharge while filming a new video.

I’m not going to berate him for it.  He had his weapon pointed in a safe direction.  He recovered quickly.  If you shoot rounds, it happens to everybody.  Yes, I’ve ND’d too.

This is a perfect example of why you should ALWAYS FOLLOW THE RULES!!!

Also, it doesn’t matter how much you want to operate with your AK (or anything else for that matter), use your damn safety.  You’re not a Delta, this is not your safety.

Today, one of my YouTube homepage recommended videos was a Los Angeles Times spot on a Katie Couric produced documentary debuting at Sundance called Under the Gun.  I guess YouTube’s algorithms can’t tell a pro-gun video from an anti-gun video, or they are trying to prosthelytize for the antis.

I watched the video.  I understand why the brilliant minds over at South Park decided that a Couric should be the standard unit of measure for human feces – with 1 Couric equivalent to 2.5 lbs of crap.

Every bit of the video was a bad faith argument for more gun control.  It starts with the duplicitous statement that mass shootings are on the rise.  They are not, but the antis like to claim they are coming up with a definition that is way outside of the common understanding of the term “mass shooting.”  The director, Stephanie Soechtig, then in part blames lax gun law for the rise in mass shootings.  To prove her point, she admits to engaging in the illegal purchase of weapons across state lines.

Ms. Soechtig and Ms. Couric then go on to drop about a ton of Ms. Couric’s namesake on the typical anti-gun/anti-NRA taking points:

“It’s interesting to see how much of the narrative about the gun debate has been dictated by the NRA.”

“Most of us agree” on the need for more gun control, but it’s the extremists in the NRA that is keeping us from achieving utopia.

NRA represents only 5% of gun owners and that 74% of NRA members want universal background checks

By this point I had had enough and went to the movie’s webpage and lo and behold, who were the official partners for the movie?

Every anti-gun group and their uncle, that’s who.  The journalism of Walter Duranty was less biased than Couric’s in this film.  But it being promoted as an objective documentary to counter of lies of the NRA.

This is the problem.  Antis argue in bad faith.  They start with a lie and it gets worse from there.

On CNN’s Obama town-hall on guns, Obama had the audacity to say to America “it is easier for a 12 or a 13-year-old to purchase a gun, and cheaper, than it is for them to get a book.”  Obama has promoted the falsehood of the “internet loophole” as a way that felons can buy guns.  Hillary Clinton has doubled down on both the internet and gun show loophole as things she intents to close as president.  Antis will go on TV and try to scare people into supporting them with ridiculous statements about ghost guns that have “the ability with a 30-caliber clip to disperse with 30 bullets within half a second. Thirty magazine clip in half a second.”  Celebrities on daytime TV will talk about how Americans have easy access to machine guns.  And of course any gun owner will tell you that the most lethal part of any gun is the shoulder thing that goes up.

Antis lie.  That is what they do.  There is no claim too outlandish.  No fact that can’t be distorted.  To them, every person with a concealed carry permit is a racist just itching to kill, and every person shot in self defense is an innocent angel.  The NRA is the enemy, and no matter the cause of the shooting, it’s always the NRA’s fault.  Always.

No wonder we can’t have “an adult discussion” about gun control.

The VPC made a big deal last year with the fact the number of firearms deaths in the US was about the same as the number of traffic fatalities in the US.  This comparison was not accidental.

“Comparing the two national icons, cars and guns, yields “a statistic that really resonates with people,” says Chelsea Parsons, co-author of the report for the Centre for American Progress. Resonance is certainly needed. There are about 320 [million] people in the United States, and nearly as many civilian firearms. And although the actual rate of gun ownership is declining, enthusiasts are keeping up the number in circulation.”

They couldn’t help but espouse the lie that the number of gun owners in this country is decreasing.  Americans have bought 100 MILLION guns since 2008 with month after month of record gun sales every time a politician opens his or her (stupid) mouth.  The fastest growing demographic of gun owners is Gun Culture 2.0, (generally) younger people who are less about hunting than personal defense and owning cool stuff.  But of of course it is a dwindling number of old white guys who are stockpiling all these guns… but I digress

The comparison  between guns and cars is designed to promote more government regulations of guns.

“Overall, the C.D.C. numbers indicate that gun deaths are trending somewhat upward as motor vehicle deaths continue on a steady decline, thanks in large measure to serious government safety regulation aimed at reducing fatalities and injuries that is notably missing in the sphere of firearms.

In fact, guns remain the only consumer product not regulated at the federal level for health and safety, in keeping with the wishes of the gun industry and compliant lawmakers.

‘Teddy bears get tested to make sure they can withstand use and abuse by kids, but guns don’t get tested to make sure they don’t go off when accidentally dropped,’ notes Kristen Rand of the Violence Policy Center.”

So in 2015 guns and cars killed about 33,000 people, each.  About 60% of those gun deaths, or about 21,000 are suicides.  That is tragic.  About 5% or 1,600 deaths were the result of accidents, with about 600 or so happening to children.  That leaves the remaining 35% of gun deaths, or about 11,000, due to homicide.  The exact numbers vary year to year, but the the relative percentages of suicide/accident/homicide remain pretty consistent.  This contrasts with motor vehicle deaths, in that they are about 100% accidental.

When it comes to reducing the number of gun deaths, there are things we can and should do.  For example, there should be more access to publicly funded mental heath facilities and that we should change the laws to make it easier for people with suicidal idealization to seek help without it ruining their lives.  Antis, however, are quite happy to restrict YOUR constitutionally protected rights to do… nothing to reduce the number of gun deaths.

So surprise, surprise, when I was reading the news and another death statistic flashed before my eyes.  In 2104, 47,055 people died of drug overdoses, 1.5 times than died of gunshots.  Most of those overdoses came from opioids, both natural (like heroin) and synthetic.  About 38% of those deaths were from prescription drug abuse.  Heroin abuse is on the rise, with most of it coming into the US through Mexico.  Along with heroin, most of the meth coming into the US comes from Mexico.

What is it that I hear from the left?  Drug decriminalization.  Wealthy celebs are going before the UN to advocate for it.  In Colorado, where Marijuana was legalized, overdoses one harder drugs are skyrocketing because just like we all learned in high school health class… Marijuana is a gateway drug.  I don’t see anybody advocating for safe storage laws for prescription pain killers.  The idea of serious border security is criticized and called unreasonable and racist by the left, to the point were many want to just to an open borders system.

We can debate the pros and cons of unrestricted immigration, but could we at least agree that we should stop the flow of narcotics into the US?  I guess not.

Drugs are killing 1.5 times as many people as guns in the US, and the same people that want to crack down on civil liberties “if it saves one life” are the same people exacerbating the drug problem.  If I, as a law abiding gun owner, have blood on my hands for all the people who died from gun shots because I support the NRA.  Than every person who derides boarder security, called for open borders, or says “legalize it” had 1.5 times the blood on their hands.

But they refuse to admit that.  Why?  Because it’s not about the number of lives lost.  It’s about control.  Your gun is a bigger threat to their nanny state machinations than some kid dying from a But Lite and Vicodin cocktail.

Depending on who is crunching the data, the effect of concealed carry on crime is either 1) concealed carry causes a reduction in violent crime, or 2) concealed carry has no effect on the rate of violent crime.

My amateur analysis is just a little different.  Reports out of Chicago show a decrease in crime as a result of Illinois CCW.  Reports out of Texas, show that more concealed carry does nothing to reduce crime.  The way I see it, concealed carry is a deterrent.  Some percentage of criminals will avoid committing certain crimes because of the risk that a CCW permit holder will shoot back.  As more people get carry permits, the crime rate decreases, until as many criminals who can be deterred by CCW will be deterred, and the decrease in crime levels off.  An increase in the number of CCW after this point has no additional effect.  So a state like Illinois, which didn’t have concealed carry, adopts CCW and the crime rate goes down.  Texas has had CCW for years, so adding more permit holders really doesn’t do much at a statistical level.

What we can agree on, is that concealed carry has not turned every fender bending into a shootout at the OK Corral or caused the streets to run red with blood.  This is the inconvenient truth that anti-gunners do their damnedest to play down.  They will lie, they will obfuscate, they will look rape survivors in the eye and say concealed carry wound’t have protected them, or that their gun would have been taken and turned against them.  They will tell you that 0.0066% of carry permit holders are representative of concealed carry as a whole and so CCW needs to be banned (849 “concealed carry killers” according to the VPC out of 12.8 MILLION people with CCW permits nation wide).

So when 6,000 Minnesotans a month apply for concealed carry, it causes the anti-gunners to go into rectal pucker mode.  Not content with that fact that Minnesota requires CCW applicants to go through firearms safety training and a comprehensive background check, antis feel compelled to try and “reeducate” their fellow citizens with lies.

“[A] significant number of Minnesotans believe that having a gun makes them safer, and unfortunately, this is not true except in very narrow circumstances. It means we have a lot of work to do in educating the public about the hazards posed by guns..”

They antis are losing on the issue of concealed carry big time.  The demands for permits is shooting through the roof.  So what is it that the antis do?

In the words of Adam Savage:

I have been watching a show on Discovery Live, called Shock Trauma: Edge of Life.  It is filmed live inside of the emergency room of the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center at the University of Maryland Medical Center.  It is considered the best Level I Trauma Center in the United States, was the first hospital to use helicopters to transport trauma victims from the scene to the ER, and the model by which all trauma centers in the US are based.  Also, my sister works there.

The season only started in the new year, so there have only been five episodes so far.  The fourth was the most interesting since it was filmed during the Baltimore riots.  So far, there has been at least one shooting featured in each episode.  This is not surprising as Baltimore is listed at the No. 19 overall (No. 2 for US cities) in the top 50 cites in the world for homicides at 54.98 per 100,000.  On a side note, there are four US cities on that list, St. Louis (No. 15), Baltimore (No. 19), Detroit (No. 28), and New Orelans (No. 32), and you might notice a trend in which way these cities lean politically.

So far, only one of the shootings what gang-on-gang violence.  What caught me off guard was the number of people who were shot AFTER being mugged or were the victims of random violent crime.  One girl was shot in the belly by a guy in a convenience store, another guy was shot in the arm and his brother killed by some teen with a gun for being on the wrong street.  You watch these people tell their stories and by every account (including that of the police) the did everything “right” according to the school of “just give the criminal what he wants, you won’t get hurt if you resist” thought.  They didn’t resist.  They got shot away.  Their life’s were forever changed because of it.

The lesson to take away from this is: there is no “right” thing to do.  Give the mugger your cash, your watch, everything you have, and he’ll still shoot you if he wants.  This “your money isn’t worth your life” attitude puts you 100% at the mercy of the worst people.  There is no guarantee that capitulation will lead you be being unharmed.  Is your money worth fighting back for?  No, but your life is.