I have a young son, so my home life is a DC and Marvel universe crossover.  A lot of what is on the TV in the evening is superhero cartoons.

Being a gun guy, this got me thinking.  The old expression is God created all men, Sam Colt made them equal.  I believe this.  So what would gun ownership and CCW be like in an America where you are as likely to be the victim of a home invasion by a couple of punks as being the victim of a planetary invasion by a race of ancient, super powerful, inter-dimensional aliens?  Or when the guy who tries to mug you at the ATM isn’t just high on drugs, but can also turn his skin into a nearly impenetrable armor?

The basic moral justification for CCW is that no person should have to find themselves at the mercy of a bad guy.  What happens when the bad guy can jump tall buildings in a single bound?  A gun is a tool by which you can defend yourself.  In a super hero universe, I believe that people should have access to weapons that have the ability to take out superheroes.  I for one would be carrying, at the very minimum, something high capacity loaded with Hornady’s Mutant Defense Vibranium tipped, Krypton core ammo.

The SHOT Show would be a bazaar of awesomeness.  Every company would be trying to hock their latest and greatest in anti-super-villain ordinance.  I’d want to see Hickock45‘s review of the new Sig Sauer matter destabilizer.  If the bad guy can out run a bullet, you have to level up to directed energy weapons.  It’s just basic physics.

Also, if you can defend yourself from rape and bodily harm with lethal force, what about unwanted psychic probing?  Could you shoot a telepath for trying to read your mind?  I’d support that.  Nothing is more personal than your inner thoughts, and I don’t want someone in my head without permission.

I know that there are some politicians who say that it should be illegal for civilians to possess weapons of that power.  But would it really matter if I can buy a death ray if there are people running around born with the ability to destroy buildings with a glance or summon tornadoes on demand?

Maybe I’m over thinking it a little.  I don’t know.  What are your opinions on gun ownership in a superhero universe?

I am sick of Iowa.  I am sick of the caucuses.  It is February 1st, and I am sick of the 2016 election cycle.

I propose a new system: Presidential Hunger Games.   All the candidates, Republican and Democrat, will be dropped into an arena to face nature and each other in fight to the death for the Oval Office.  Deployment to the arena will occur on the first Tuesday in November, and the last one alive wins.  If there is more than one candidate alive by the first Tuesday in January, a general election will be held on the following Tuesday to pick the winner.

Campaign contributions to candidates will be in the form of supplies of food, water, survival equipment, and melee weapons.  You can donate whatever you want, but a candidate can only eat and carry so much, rendering huge donations by a moneyed elite and big business pretty much obsolete.

I know, I know, this isn’t very democratic.  I think the last few elections, however, have shown that Americans, by and large, can’t handle democracy.  Being a responsible and educated electorate is just too difficult in an era where know-nothing reality TV stars are the primary source that many American’s get their political opinions from.

Like H.L. Mencken said: “When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental — men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand.  So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost… All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

If we work hard, we might be able to get this Amendment ratified in time to affect the 2016 election.  Then I propose we make this year’s arena in somewhere in the middle of the Serengeti.  Nothing would make me happier than to watch Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump get turned into Hyena shit on national television.

Or maybe I’m just feeling bitter.

Australia is a mostly gun free paradise, with no appreciable violent crime, worth emulating by the United States, according to President Barack Obama and presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton.  So imagine my surprise when I read about an armed robbery that occurred down under.  The store owner, lacking any legal firearms, did his best to defend himself from two armed individuals, with what he had… a homemade flamethrower (not pictured below)!!!

Armed with his bug spray and BBQ lighter, the store owner valiantly defends his life and livelihood for about a minute, and then is overpowered by the men with guns.  Fortunately for the store owner, he managed to escape with his life.  This could have ended a whole lot worse, which is what happens when you bring bug spray to a gun fight.  This is of course the same bad advice that NBC has given on the Today Show, minus the fire.

Beyond the theft of $680AUS, the real crime was that one of the robbers mutilated a Marlin Model 56 Lever-Matic .22 LR.  That alone makes me wish the store owner had managed to light one of the robbers on fire.

As far as I’ve been able to glean from the interwebs, the store owner will not be charged with a crime.  At least he has that going for him.

I can’t say the same for the poor peasants living on the other side of the globe from Down Under.  In the wake of the Cologne New Years Eve rape-a-palooza, a Danish girl had the audacity to defend herself from a migrant attacker with a can of seasoning.  For her actions defending her womanly virtues, she is being punished for carrying a weapon.

In the countries our progressive betters believe are so much more sophisticated, the people have lost first the tools to, then the right to defend themselves.  There are states and localities in the US that are pushing for the same sophistication.

This I cannot abide.  I’m sorry, but pepper spray is not a weapon.  A Sig Sauer is a weapon.  Which is why I chose to carry the latter not the former.  Then again, I’m also an American.  And in my America, if you try to rob a store store owner at gunpoint or rape a woman, you get shot.  Then again, I’m as sophisticated as my paring of a bottle of Sam’s Club wine, Hickory Farms Smoked Cheddar Blend cheese, and Netflix.

Miguel made a couple of posts about the Hugh Glass of Possums.  I thought nothing more of it until the Academy Award nomination worthy story of the possum came back to me the long way around through the Book of Face.

As I read the comments posted on  Sunshine Haven Animal Rescue & Wildlife Rehabilitation‘s page I realized this episode is a perfect example of the incredibly wide and continuously growing cultural gulf that exists between liberalism and conservatism.

Between the two Facebook posts by Sunshine Haven, the original post and the one about the possum’s recovery, I counted 33 posts referring to the possum as a “baby” (including six calling him a “sweet baby”),  six calling him an “angel,”  as well as a few calling him “little guy” and “sweetie.”  A dozen people offered to adopt the possum.  There were demands that the person responsible be punished for animal abuse, and one person felt that the person who did this should be maimed.

The possum went though extensive surgery, and is recovering with a course of antibiotics.  I have not seen a cost listed for the surgery on the possum, but I know when my dog was playing with some of my wife’s yarn and then had bloody diarrhea, it cost us $900 to find out that she DID NOT swallow something and need to have surgery.  So I can only being to imagine how much saving this possum cost.  If there are any readers out there who work in animal or veterinary medicine and want to speculate, please leave your guess in the comments.

Over on the other side of of the known universe…

Here are some things facts about possums.  They have one of the smallest and least developed brains for a mammal of their size, and are remarkably stupid creatures.  Their lifespan is described as “unusually short” being only 2 to 4 years.  Possums rarely carry rabies, and eat ticks which helps prevent the spread of lime disease, but they poo a lot and can spread a number of parasites through feces as well as diseases like salmonella and toxoplasmosis.  They can do extensive property damage, a lot of it relating to pooping in insulation (gross pics).  There are a number of posts about the problems possums pose to chickens and horses.

While I, and most people, have no problem with possums in the wild, they are disease spreading nuisance creatures when they invade your home and yard.  Growing up in South Florida, I can attest to the annoyance they do when they get under your house and die there.  There are a number of websites that talk about how to get rid of possums, including how to humanly kill them.  They are no where near endangered and relocation can be difficult or illegal, not to mention all you are doing is making the possum someone else’s problem.

Of course there is no excuse for animal cruelty.  While I don’t know the motivation for someone putting two crossbow bolts through a possum, my speculation is that it was someone trying to dispatch the critter while it was on his property.  Given that there is a $5,000 reward for information on the shooter, made available by through donations by people who presumably have their pitchforks sharpened and torches lit, we may never know the motivation.

Possums are notoriously hard to kill.  I showed Miguel’s post to a coworker who is a big time hunter.  I mean, has a taxidermy animal at his work station level hunter.  He commented that possums are just about bulletproof, recounting that his dad put about a dozen rounds of 22 LR HP into one, and had to finish it off with a splitting maul to the head. The ability to withstand multiple gunshots, both 22’s and 45’s has been confirmed on other message boards.  So I can only imagine that the shooter thought that he had made two good, killing, shots on the possum, not realizing just how Wade Wilson these critters are.

So there you have it.  One side that thinks of possums as “sweet babies” and “little angels” and just wants to give them hugs and snuggles; and will spend an incalculable sum of money to save one from death for another… 6 months to a year of natural life.  The other side who acknowledges that they are wild animals and a nuisance that spread disease and are damaging to property and livestock.

This difference in attitude is how Californians can prioritize the water needs of a bait fish over hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland.

This difference in attitude is why places like California and Colorado can decriminalize marijuana in defiance of federal law while clamping down on gun rights in a continuous attempt to do away with the Second Amendment in their states.

This difference is seen in every response a terrorist attack and mass shooting, whether we should increase the number gun free zones or ease how law abiding citizens obtain concealed carry permits.

This is the difference between believing “hands up don’t shoot” and a non-indictment by a grand jury.

I think Bill Maher put it best when he said “I think liberals have to stop insisting that the world is the way they want to it be instead of the way it is… [Y]ou cannot just insist that the reality that you think about in your head is the reality that exists in the world.”  Sure he was talking about ISIS, but he could be talking about just about any issue in America anymore.

How we as a nation address our national problems is a directly related to how we view them.  Were the rioters in Ferguson and other cities sweet babies or wild animals?  What about the San Bernardino terrorists?  Homeless peeing in the streets of NYC?

Like Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”  For me, the fact is a possum is a nuisance animal.

There has been a slashing spree in New York City.  There have been a number of edge weapon attacks in the NYC Subway system recently, including a woman hacked up with a machete.  In response to this, the Mayor of NYC has encouraged residence of New York to buy and carry guns to defend themselves from blade wielding attackers.

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I’m kidding.  Of course he’s not.  The NYC government just decriminalized peeing in the street and turnstile jumping  because… post Giuliani NYC was just too nice?  No, the local media is downplaying the Subway slashing with a “crime happens, nothing to see here” casualness.  Of course more people will be killed, but as long nobody gets killed in an act of self defense, who in NYC really cares?

I caught this little gem in last week’s SHOT Show news.

Some guy was reading Dana Losch’s book, Hands of My Gun, when he was violently attacked (let’s not mince words here) by an anti-gun individual.  The book was taken from him and ripped up.

This exemplifies why so many anti-gun people are so anti-gun.  They project their inadequacies onto others.  They can’t control themselves.  Rather than admit to their personal failings, they take the high ground and say “every had anger issues and so we should limit access to guns.”  They try and transmute their personal fault into a position of concern for the safety for their fellow man.

To take a slight detour into political and moral philosophy: You see this same phenomenon in the support of democratic socialism and people like Bernie Sanders.  So many Sanders supporters are young people with lots of college debt and low paying jobs.  They envy the rich.  They want government handouts.  But they know that to say so is greedy.  So they advocate for redistribution on behalf of “the poor and marginalized” as a way of masking their own avarice as the virtue of concern for the welfare of others.  The only poor they really care about is themselves, but they to feel like they are being altruistic when they do it.

But I digress.  Back to the original point… this is why every time a state expands CCW, the anti-gunners say “the streets will run red with blood.”  Because if they (the antis) had guns, they probably would.  The rest of us have a firmer grasp on our emotions than that.  I may see some guy in an airport reading a book by Michael Moore and I know I won’t rip it out of his hands and destroy it.  I may secretly desire that one day he suffer from the worst symptoms of syphilis, but I will keep that feeling bottled up inside.

The bumper sticker adage is true: an armed society is a polite society.  Or as the great Theodore Roosevelt said “speak softly, and carry a big stick.”

I enjoy going to gun shows.  I’ve been going to them ever since I was a little kid and my dad would take me.  I can’t wait until my son is old enough for me to take him and we can have that same type of bonding.

I used to live in rural Indiana and Indiana is a good state for gun shows.  The best by far is the INDY 1500, and four time a year, I would drive the hour to Indianapolis to go to it.  I bought my very first gun at the INDY 1500 my freshman year of college.  It is a huge show, and a good one.  I’ve always had a lot of fun going to gun shows in Indiana.

President Obama and Hillary Clinton have been talking about gun control, and about closing the “gun show loophole” in particular.  I guess all that talk is what inspired some putz journalist from The Daily Beast to head off to the Crown Point gun show in Indiana.  Oh, the horror!  Oh, the humanity!  AR-15’s and AK-47’s were for sale!  Just laid out on tables for people to buy!  Of course the author had to bring up Sandy Hook and San Bernardino.  But I don’t seem to remember those guns having come from gun shows….

Yes, the author does bring up that guns purchased at Indiana gun shows have ended up in the hands of criminals in Chicago, calling out the case of David Lewisbey.  But the article notes that “Lewisbey was convicted and sentenced to 16 years in federal prison” for firearms and drug trafficking.  Why?  Because buying guns to sell them to criminals across state lines is already a crime.  The fact of the matter is that gun shows aren’t even a major source of illegally trafficked guns, accounting for about 2% of guns used in crimes.

At least the Daily Beast acknowledges that the people at the gun show were genuinely friendly.

I can’t say the same for the Buzzfeed journalist reporter hack.  She decided to turn her trip the Kokomo gun shows into a race baiting hatchet job.  The thing about the social justice crowd, is that they have to make race and bigotry part of everything.

“Four people sat at the registration table: one white guy in his fifties and three women in their twenties, one of whom was black. Her blackness threw me off nearly as much as the mood outside. We made the sort of eye contact that meant we’d acknowledged each other’s blackness but we weren’t going to bond over it.”

“Black people aren’t part of the big tent of gun ownership. We’re never assumed to be law abiding, reasonable gun owners. That kind of gun ownership is seen as an upstanding white person act; a picket fence closed to outsiders like blacks. I wanted to see what was on the other side of the slats separating me from perfectly honorable, white people gun show attendance.”

Seems the author is not aware that the fastest growing demographic of gun owners and carry permit holders are women and minorities.  Maybe she should watch Mr. Colion Noir’s excellent YouTube channel a little bit.

She spots several other black people at the show, some of who are vendors.  But she still manages to ignore that to come to her predisposed conclusion:

“The gun show is where that white suspicion arms itself…  One gun show table held pamphlets for the Oath Keepers, the non-partisan militia whose mission is to protect Americans from being disarmed — using assault rifles. But what it feels like people are most suspicious of is me.”

Yeah, she found the guy with the table full of Confederate flags.  I’ve been to countless gun shows in half-a-dozen states, and there is always that one asshole who shows up with way too much NAZI memorabilia and vaguely racist literature.  But I’ve never seen “that guy” get much in the way of business and most people ignore him.

By the tone of her piece, you’d get the impression that she attended a Klan Rally.  Except, it seems that everybody there was nice to her… and that was some form of bigotry.

I enjoy gun shows.  Thousands, millions of other Americans also enjoy gun shows.  They are a celebration of freedom for us.  If you don’t like guns, don’t go to the gun show.

I’m not going to attend Burning Man or the the Folsom Street Fair and complain about the attendees wearing a diaper while getting spanked.  You do whatever it is that you liberals like to do, leave our gun shows alone.