According to our president, it is easier to buy a gun than a book or fresh vegetables.

That our president can say something so ridiculously wrong in public is mind boggling.  I would write a longer post deconstructing his statements, but I am afraid even thinking about what he said for too long would damage my brain.

Although I am considering taking bets on what Obama will say “buying guns is easier than _______” next.

I think I’m just going to end this with the popular meme:

I’m sorry that I’m having a hard time believing you due to your track record of being a lying liar that constantly lies out of your lying liar hole.

Earlier this year, Texas joined 8 other states in allowing CCW permit holders to carry on state university campuses.  To obtain a Texas CCW permit, as far as I can ascertain from the website, the applicant must be 21 or over, go through a through background  – check including a fingerprint check – and undergo firearms training, which is live fire.  This is run of the mill for me at this point, my IL and NE permits both required fingerprints and live fire training.  My FL permit required fingerprints but the training was classroom only.

I lived in SD for a while.  Campus carry there was at the discretion of the school.  At the school I went to, the policy was “don’t ask, don’t tell, just keep it concealed.”  Where I did my undergrad in Indiana, I used to clean my guns in my dorm room when I went shooting during break.  I got in trouble with the RA, only because I made the dorm smell like CLP.  Campus policy was students could bring guns but they were supposed to be stored with campus security when not in use.  I was dating a townie and stored them at her place.  Heck, my undergrad had a shooting club funded by the school and put on three open shoots every year.  The point is, guns on campus is nothing new for me, going back 14 years.  In all that time do you know how many violent encounters I experienced with drunken college kids with their guns?  If you guessed “none,” you win.

Of course none of this matters to some people, who imagine that concealed carry on campus will turn every state school into the OK Corral.  So some students at UT-Austin (National Rank No. 52 – hence the title of the post) have decided to protest TX Campus Carry by carrying their own … protest items … er … recreational prosthetic male accouterments (link possibly NSFW).

I just … um … can’t even…

I mean, I get it.  You know the tried trope: guns are phallic extensions.  So how better to protest carrying guns than carrying literal phallic extensions?  Except this brand of stupid is so thick I could use it patch cracks in a asphalt driveway.

“‘You’re carrying a gun to class? Yeah well I’m carrying a HUGE [ARTIFICIAL MALE APPENDAGE],'” Jessica Jin (protest group founder) says in the group’s description. “Just about as effective at protecting us from sociopathic shooters, but much safer for recreational play.”

Seriously?  A marital aid is just as effective as a gun at defending oneself against a mass shooter?  Somehow I don’t think that’s accurate.  Unless, maybe, getting pelted with flying silicone phalli causes the shooter to die of shame.  Also, I’d be a little afraid to have relations with Ms. Jin.

Recently, politicians, the media, and social media has been awash with comments and criticisms of campus rape culture (which of course doesn’t exist) and the rate of sexual assault on campus (which isn’t as bad as it is claimed to be).  So I am astounded at the monumental doublethink that is happening here where 1) campuses are a hotbed of rape and abuse of women, 2) let’s protest giving women the ability to defend themselves against rape by carrying sex objects.

As a borderline-libertarian conservative,  I get cognitive dissonance really badly. Cognitive dissonance is the psychological term for the discomfort you get when your brain is trying to reject doublethink, and these people are giving me a migraine.  All I can say at this point is: I’m embarrassed for these kids.  Life is hard, it’s even harder when you’re stupid.  Based on that, I think this kids are going to have a real rough time when they get out of college.

My cousin’s husband has been ranting on the Book of Face about the Founder/CEO of Jimmy John’s big game hunting.  From the best research that I can find, nothing Jimmy John Liautaud was illegal and that the pictures of his African hunts that made it online, are from a fair chase safari.

None of that matters to him, who continues to push the same old canards that big game hunters are cowards, psychopaths, murderers, etc.  Of course he considers it his moral duty to proselytize to all his friends on the Book of Face, why they should Boycott Jimmy John’s because of this outrage.

Here’s the thing.  I am a gun industry insider (that’s as much detail as I’m going to give).  I make my living off of guns, many of them for hunting.  I pay for my house, utilities, food, everything, with the money spent by people like Jimmy John.

My cousin in pregnant.  Her baby shower is coming up.  Giving the feelings that have been espoused, I’m wondering if I should not buy them a baby shower gift?  The money that will be used to buy a gift would have come from cowards, psychopaths, and murderers hunters and sportsmen.  I’m sure they aren’t going to want something tainted by “blood money” as a present?  I’m only abiding by their wishes, right?

Ben Carson is under attack for his comments about gun control and the Holocaust.  Of all the groups condemning him, the one that has truly gotten under my skin in the Anti-Defamation League.  I have no love for the ADL.  I have participated in a few Appleseed Shoots and have found the atmosphere to be nothing but inviting and patriotic.  The ADL, unsurprisingly, is not a fan of Project Appleseed.  I have ranted about anti-gun Jews before, so this time around I’m going to let the Nobel Laureate, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, have the last word.

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?… The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

3.5 hours, 1,000 rounds of 12 gauge, 2-3/4 and 3 inch.  Lot of fun, little sore.

Let that quote sink in for a second.  I know what John Oliver is trying to say in his typical sarcastic way, but I don’t think he realized just how well he made the gun-rights community’s point for us.

The TSA is an expensive boondoggle, to the tune of $7 Billion in 2015.  The TSA has been widely recognized by both the left and the right to be nothing but Security Theater, which when put to the test, failed to detect a weapon going through security 95% of the time.  The TSA has never been confirmed to have stopped a terrorist attack.  And that comes from Slate, the cheerleader for big government.

Some guy tries to blow up a plane with his shoes and 14 years later we’re still being tormented by incompetent government employees when trying to fly home for the holidays.

As bad as the TSA and the whole of post 9/11 security is, all the right thinking people was to unleash the same ignorant politicians, ham-fisted government stooges, and bureaucratic ineptitude against 100+ million US citizens and somehow expect positive results!?!  History and logic predicts the opposite, ceaseless harassment of law abiding gun owners and not one criminal shooting stopped.

Call me a pessimist, but I just don’t see the blue nitrile glove wearing the wad of airport fast-food, stuffed into a pair of poorly fitting, government issue polyester pants and sweater vest, who just took 5 minutes to figure out where my birth date is on my drivers license, getting down off his stool to put his life on the line to stop a mass shooting.  Ain’t gonna happen.

And so that’s the point right there.  The right thinking people can demand the government react the way it did after 9/11 and do something.  What will get done won’t make us any safer and only hassle those who aren’t going to do anything bad in the first place.  But hey, at least they’ll feel safer.

Dear Ms. Clinton,

Please try and repeal the Protection of the Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.  I dare you.  I double dog dare you.  I had my identity stolen a few years ago.  At least one person opened up several credit cards in my name.  My tax return was collected by a different person twice.  My credit still hasn’t recovered which has caused me lasting problems in my ability to get a mortgage.

So please change the law.  I will raise an army of lawyers on the promise of contingency fees to sack the credit card companies, computer manufacturers, internet service providers, and everybody else my lawyers can think of for negligent in a class action suit by the victims of identity theft, for not being able to foresee that their products would be used by criminals for illegal activity that has caused me lasting damage.  People hate the credit card companies a lot more than they hate guns.  Please allow me to drag the fat cat CEO of a credit card company before a jury.  I will open the flood gates of litigation against your big bank donors.  So please, please, establish that a company can be held liable for the illegal actions of its customers.   I have a private island that I want to buy.