I saw Miguel’s post Broward County Sheriff’s Office keep adding to the crap pile, and his follow up And interesting question and I think we know the answer, and now it is time for me to double down on that.

I have posted this video before, but I am going to post it again.

(Yes, it is from Cracked.  I know they have turned into a bunch of SJWs.  This video is still worthwhile.)

All of the details in that video are true.

Maksim Gelman murdered four people.

The police hid in the conductors car, behind a locked door, and watched as Joe Lozito was stabbed repeatedly.

Joe Lozito sued the NYPD.  Their response was “fuck you civilian, we don’t have to do shit to protect you.”  A judge agreed.

There are two Supreme Court cases and one Court of Appeals case that should be burned into the soul of every American on both sides of the gun debate.

Town of Castle Rock v. Gonzales

DeShaney v. Winnebago County

Warren v. District of Columbia

legal precedent in the United States is very clear.  You can call the police and tell them you are being attacked, you can report a history of violence by a person to the police, you can get a restraining order against that person, and the police have no duty to intervene on your behalf and help you.  They can stand there, with their dick in one hand and their other thumb up their ass, and watch you die and don’t have to do fuck all to try and prevent it.  

I can guarantee you that the only reason that School Resources Officer resigned was because Sheriff Israel ended up with egg on his face after news of the SRO hiding outside like a chicken-shit broke following the CNN town hall.  Had the Sheriff not tired to milk his 15 minutes of fame on CNN, that shit would have been ignored just like the 39 calls to the Cruz house.

I can also guarantee that the SRO thought he had it made.  He didn’t have to be in a patrol car, cruising around Broward county, doing traffic stops (the leading cause of death for police officers).  An easy cake walk job.  Until the struck-by-lightning-like-odds of a school shooting happening and Deputy Goldbricker pulled a Brave Sir Robin.

The entirety of the “you don’t need a gun to protect yourself, just call the police” argument is built on lies and horseshit.

The old refrain from CCW advocates is “when seconds count, the police are minutes away.”  In reality it should be “when seconds count, the police are under no obligation to give a fuck and risk their own lives for you.”

Forget the FBI.  Forget the 39 calls to the Cruz home.  Forget the school deferment program.

What the anti gun crowd needs to be held to the fire about is that.  Why should we put our lives in the hands of people with the qualified immunity to stand there and watch us die.

There is no oppression like collective punishment, and those who have collectively punished unarmed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.

Should bullets be sold in Kinder Eggs?#strangelaws #laws #guncontrol #weirdlaws #22minutes pic.twitter.com/gWUz5YGYZS

— 22Minutes (@22_Minutes) February 22, 2018

22 Minutes is a Canadian show, sort of their version of The Daily Show.

Here they mock the US for banning Kinder Eggs but not guns.

This is a line of bullshit I have heard for years from anti gun activists who think they are witty.

Ignoring the Constitutional protection of gund and not European chocolates, this crap illustrates a fundamental difference between gun and anti gun people.

Here are the four cardinal rules of gun safety.

1. Treat all guns as if they are always loaded.
2. Never let the muzzle cover anything that you are not willing to destroy.
3. Keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on target and you have made the decision to shoot.
4. Be sure of your target and what is behind it.

The unofficial 5th rule is: Secure your firearms so that unauthorized persons may not access them.

We drill these into shooters because we know guns are dangerous.  We know guns can kill.  We accept that responsibility when we use them and do our best to use them safely.

Kinder Eggs are chocolate eggs like Cadbury Cream Eggs but instead of liquid diabetes, it is a piece of plastic inside.  They are banned by the FDA because they are a choking hazard.

You do not expect a chocolate to kill a child.  It is not something you expect to be inherently dangerous.   A parent doesn’t hand a child a chocolate thinking “there may be some plastic garbage in there my kid can choke on.” 

A gun is the opposite.  You know a gun I’d inherently dangerous and you don’t hand one to a three year old. 

To equate guns and Kinder Eggs and the dangers of each is as intellectually dishonest as a person can be in this issue.

Mockery of this shows that anti gun people do no accept personal responsibility.   However they are fine with exposing children to unanticipated risk, as long as it’s not a gun. 

This isn’t witty, it’s stupid and shows a complete lack of critical thinking about risk and responsibility.

As of the last few days, I have figured out the Democrat’s campaign message for 2020.

We will mandate you turn in your $1,000 AR-15 and $600 Glock for a $50 gift card and you should be happy about that, but your $1,000 bonus check from your employer is crumbs that makes you miserable.

I can’t see how this will backfire on them at election time.

I watched last night’s town hall on guns and it was fucking travesty.

It’s wasn’t anything close to an honest interaction on guns.  It was an Orwellian two minute hate that lasted for two hours.

CNN somehow convinced Marco Rubio to go into a room with high profile victims and take abuse.  When the Romans used to throw Christians to the lions, the Romans treated Christians with more respect than those people treated Rubio and Dana Loesch.

I get that some of those people lost loved ones, others witnessed a massacre, but every one of those people have been given a platform of “you are a victim and now you can use that to crybully people.”  And boy-howdy did they do that.

Lets be clear on this.  The goverment fucked the dog at every level on this one.

The Broward County school system failed at every possible turn to stop this because Liberals have their panties in a knot over the “school to prison pipeline.”

The Broward County Sheriff failed to do anything after 39 visits to the Cruz house.

The Florida Department of Children and Families failed to adequately assess the situation, put Cruz on some drugs and walked away.

The FBI was notified about Cruz twice, and failed to follow up in any meaningful way.

So now CNN hosts a town hall where an angry father can hurl loaded questions on guns at a US Senator and whip the crowd into booing him.

Also, for a group of people that keep saying “we’re not coming for your guns, don’t be paranoid” some of the biggest applause of the night came when Rubio said a new AWB would effectively ban all semi autos.  Boy did the crowd love that.

A Parkland student went off the fucking rails.

“It’s hard to look at you and not look down the barrel of an AR-15.”  What the fuck is that?  That is beyond twisted, outright blaming Marco Rubio of the shooting more than Nikolas Cruz.

Then he challenges Rubio not to take NRA campaign money, because Parkland was the NRA’s fault.

Then he refers to Dana Loesch as “th NRA lady” and questions her love as a mother.

Fuck that kid.  CNN gave him a mic and a stage, he had power and he was going to wield it.  I had zero sympathy for him.

Senator Bill Nelson is a mendacious, weaselly fuck.  He said AR-15 are for hunting people and made a plea about background checks that was totally fucking irrelevant.

Cruz bought seven rifles from dealers because the goverment fucked it and nothing in Cruz’s history made him a prohibited person.  Same for Jared Lee Loughner, Seung Hui Cho, Devin Patrick Kelley, and Dylann Roof.  What the fuck is the point of a background check system if the goverment can’t flag to people to be prohibited persons?

Then it ended with a stupid fucking song by the Douglas kids.

By this time my well of sympathy had run dry.

For two hours I watched as professional victims, cry bullies, and overnight activists shit on the NRA and law abiding gun owners because of a tragedy caused by the people in power having their collective thumbs buried to the hilt up their collective assholes.

Not one fucking person in that hate-fest actually blamed Nikolas Cruz for the shooting.

Not one person in that audience asked how layer upon layer of government could have failed so masterfully at doing its job.

Yet, at the same time, those same fucking people want to turn that bumble-fucking edifice of incompetence at the people who did not kill anybody on Valentine’s day, law abiding gun owners.

It was a shit show of Liberal anti-gun tropes.

It is unbelievable to me that one person with an encyclopedic history of violence committed a mass shooting because the government shit the bed on its one duty, to protect us, not now 100 million people who didn’t kill anybody  will have to pay for it.

All that did was fracture the country more.

https://twitter.com/timjacobwise/status/966150943128551425

When I pictute jack boots kicking in doors, beating patents in front of their children, I think about Kristallnacht and the atrocities of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

It is for precisely that reason I own guns, and AR pattern rifles specificly.

Never again.  Not with a hash tag but a bullet.

When I think about that scenario, I’m fighting off the jack boot thugs.

When Tim Wise fantasies about that scenario, he’s wearing the swastika and jack boots.

He was supposedly raised Jewish, but it’s clear he’s now with the Progressives Church of Statism. 

The more anti gun he gets, the more he proves to me why I need the Second Amendment.

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?