Where a Hispanic Catholic, and a Computer Geek write about Gun Rights, Self Defense and whatever else we can think about.
I woke up this morning to the news that Fidel Castro has died.
For a moment I was sad, only because his arrival in hell meant that Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, and Che will get a break from being tortured as Satan rolls out the welcome wagon for the last of the 20th century’s mass murdering dictators to head down to perdition.
I hope Fidel’s sodomizing by demons is extra painful tonight.
My full statement on the death of Castro when I get back from vacation.
I have blogged a couple of times before about the dangers that wild animals, particularly bears, are for humans when people stop thinking about animals as they are and start treating them like live Disney characters. The moment that you forget the bear is North America’s apex predator while on a hike, is the moment that the park rangers have to try to identify your body by the bits and pieces they pick out of bear shit.
It may be prejudice on my behalf, but it seems to me that the people that forget about the true power of nature are more often than not Liberals. I think this is in part because hunters and anglers are overwhelmingly conservative.
To think about the dangers of nature as something that is “out there” far away, something that you have to enter by leaving the city and the suburbs is dangerous. It creates complicity. A rattle snake is just a dangerous in your back yard in Texas as it is in the most remote National Park.
Former Texas Governor, Rick Perry, saw some brief media exposure when he shot a Coyote that what threatening his dog during a jog in the Austin suburbs. I can tell you that we saw Coyote in the Chicago Suburbs, and they were making their way downtown.
I figured that is what happen when I heard about a Chicago Alderman who was injured by a wild animal in a park. Alderman Howard Brookins suffered a broken nose, a fractured skull, and had five or six teeth knocked, in a run in with a squirrel.
Yep, a squirrel.
Never underestimate the killing power of a wild animal. It may look harmless, the Rocky the Flying Vector for Infection will mess up your day.
Always be prepared to defend yourself.
In preparing my last post, I read a comment in The Trace that has to be the stupidest, most social justice statement I have ever read in my life. It made my face melt.
Earlier this year, The Trace explored how “murder inequality” leaves black residents of some economically isolated neighborhoods in starkly disproportionate danger of getting shot. Contributor Daniel Kay Hertz found that in two Chicago neighborhoods — Burnside and Fuller Park — the homicide rate was more than 100 per 100,000 residents, over five times the city average.
Murder inequality?
MURDER INEQUALITY?
The worst part about gun violence is that not enough upper middle class white people are getting murdered!?!
I guess we need some kind of affirmative action for murder. Some method were we can encourage a gang member to not shoot a rival gang member but shoot the occasional waspy country club member.
College educated white Americans with a family income over $143,000 (top 10%) need to spend more time terrified that they will be shot when they step outside of their homes.
For equality.
The Trace is loosing its poop over the idea that President Elect Trump has made noise about enacting 50 state wide national concealed carry a reality.
The core of the article is that Maryland requires 16 hours of training, a live fire shoot, background check, and then the blessing of local government.
The biggest barrier to getting a concealed carry license in Maryland, though, is that even an applicant as clean as Mr. Rogers must still demonstrate a “good and substantial reason” for needing to carry a concealed weapon. A simple desire for “self defense” does not meet that standard.
Ah, yes. The “good and substantial reason” which was struck as a violation of the Second Amendment in Woollard v. Gallagher (but was overturned by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals). The result of this is that there are only about 14,000 active CCW permits in Maryland.
In an earlier Trace article, which was an exquisite masterpiece in the art of moral relativism, The Trace tried to prove that Chicago’s gun laws were effective because:
This is the graphic they used in the article.
Holy shit! Baltimore, Maryland, is No. 4 in the country for homicide rate, with more than double that of Chicago.
Suddenly the simple desire for “self defense” seems to meet the “good and substantial reason” standard for concealed carry.
Want a peak inside Baltimore? Watch this episode of Shock Trauma, filmed during the Baltimore riots at the University of Maryland Medical Center. Baltimore is just a wash in random killings, and it is getting worse, with 2016 having a record number of homicides.
I’ve always said, it is the places that I can’t carry that I want to carry the most.
Amidst all of this gang related violence and random crime, what is the big concern in Maryland?
The people of Maryland don’t want lots of people walking around the state while armed.
So Maryland is fighting concealed carry. The reason for this is the thesis of this Trace article. States with lower standards are going to allow people to carry concealed in states with higher standards.
If a man from Utah wanted to drive from Salt Lake City to Virginia Beach with a pistol strapped under his coat and a concealed carry permit from his state in his wallet, he could legally do so — just as long as he takes a 200 mile detour to avoid passing through Illinois, where his Utah concealed gun license won’t be recognized.
I have a Utah and (had) an Illinois CCW permit. I lived in Illinois when they passed their permitting law. it was made quite clear by the Democrat legislature why Illinois was going to require a 16 hour class. Because it would be a very expensive and time consuming burden for most working class people to meet the requirements and therefore the would be discouraged from carrying. I took the 16 hour course. It covered all the same material as the 4 hour Utah or Florida course, in 4 times as much time. It took an entire weekend and cost $500. I learned nothing from the State of Illinois that I hadn’t learned before.
Long and expensive training courses are the poll tax of concealed carry. It places an undo burden on a right and so discourages people, especially working class and poor people (who arguably live in neighborhoods where they might be in more need of CCW) from exercising that right. And just like the poll tax, it is dirty trick carried out by Democrat legislatures.
A concealed carrier from Miami, meanwhile, could drive straight up I-95 without any problems until he got to Maryland, which doesn’t accept any out-of-state concealed carry licenses whatsoever.
But opponents say a federal mandate would force states that exclude people they deem high risk to accept licenses issued in states with looser standards… Lindsay Nichols, a staff attorney with the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, argues that the fact that state standards vary so widely gives lie to gun rights proponents drivers’ license analogy. She points out that states recognize each other’s drivers licenses because “states have almost uniformly adopted strong standards with regards to driving. They require drivers tests in a uniform manner in a way that doesn’t apply to guns.”
I grew up in Miami, and have a Florida CCW permit (gotta collect em all). The Miami-Dade MSA is more than twice the size of the Baltimore MSA, and every bit as “diverse.” You can’t tell me that carrying is Miami, or Atlanta, or Houston, or Dallas is going to be any different than carrying in Baltimore. Are the basic ruled of gun safety different in Texas?
No. What is different is the attitude of elected officials. The CCW permit holder from Miami or Dallas is not going to go to Baltimore and suddenly start shooting everyone he sees. Neither with the CCW permit holder from small town Indiana or Alabama, for that matter.
Virginia’s Attorney General, Democrat Mark Herring, has tried to clamp down on concealed carry reciprocity, briefly cancelling agreements with other states last December before being overruled by a deal* between Governor Terry McAuliffe, also a Democrat, and Republican state legislators.
*Putting Governor McAuliffe’s balls in a vice vis-a-vis his security detail.
What changed in Virginia that prompted a change in Virginia’s concealed carry reciprocity? Was there in influx of yokels from Appalachia shooting up the town? No, it was the election of a Clinton stooge to the State Capital. It was a purely partisan, political act, that did nothing to increase the safety of Virginians.
Should concealed carry be shoved down the throats of Blue states that are resistant to the idea?
Yes.
Why?
Because the Emancipation Proclamation, that’s why. Sometimes the President has to step and ensure the civil rights (especially the Constitutionally established civil rights) of American citizens, when the governments of the states refuse to recognize those rights.
I can just see the governors of New York, New Jersey, California, and the rest of the Blue holdouts, standing on the Statehouse steps like some anti-gun George Wallace, yelling “No concealed carry now, no concealed carry tomorrow, no concealed carry forever.”
And they will be forced to relent and the citizens of those states, and their visitors, will be all the safer for it.
CJ Werleman is a Salon columnist, author, Radical Islam apologist, and “I’m not an anti-Semite, I just hate Zionism and think Israel is the epitome of evil” anti-Semite*.
Werleman took to to Twitter on Sunday to do what tolerant progressives do best: express a complete lack of understanding of our government, insult/condescend to Middle America, and call for the deaths of large numbers of people who disagree with him politically. Pretty much another day that ends in “y” for a Salon columnist.
So Wereleman’s candidate didn’t win the election and so now he wants to reduce America to a Banana Republic with a coup. The purpose of the United States military is to defend the United States. Not carry out the whim of some liberal dipshit suffering from post election butt-hurt. The reason our soldiers – not “fuckers” – don’t stage a coup is that we in the USA are a stable republic. Our soldiers are patriots that obey their oath of enlistment:
I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.”
Note the two key parts of the oath: I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me.
One of the hallmarks of American exceptionalism is the fact that we have had peaceful transitions of power between presidents 44 times, over 227 years. Even during the Civil War, the United States held an election without a coup. Trump wins, and this asshole wants to undo that.
Yep, urban liberal Democrats are wise and wonderful. Rural conservatives are racist. Progressive tolerance at its finest. It’s not like this offensive and reductive train of thought is the reason Trump won. Continuing to push this way of thinking is sure to change hearts and minds and win the Democrats back the White House in 2020.
A lot. It’s where your food comes from.
Somebody told you that already and you dismissed it. Trying to fathom this level of privilege and ignorance in one tweet is causing my head to throb.
Ah yes, lets wage war on Rural America. Maybe he can use the military that just overthrew the democratically elected president to do that.
Even if Werlemen were to retreat to the position that he meant cultural war, until the election of Trump, the cultural war was being won by the liberals. It’s not like allowing men in women’s public bathrooms was an American cultural norm that the Republicans tried to outlaw in NYC and San Francisco. Gun control, celebrating abortion, normalizing pedophilia, terrorism apologists, all of this emanates from the Blue States.
What else is in this Tweet? How about some causal dismissal of rural people as stupid and illiterate.
I found this map of the most popular majors by state:
Seems that Werleman’s hated rural states are where we get most of our engineers and all of our agricultural scientists. But I guess we all hate books.
This series of Tweets is so typical Liberal/Progressive Salon that I’m getting deja vu writing this post.
Call rural Americans stupid and racist? Check!
Threaten to kill Trump? Check!
Insult our military? Check!
Want to wage war against/kill rural and middle Americans? Check!
This is just old hat at this point. Want to really shock me. Show me a Salon reading Liberal calling for real tolerance, honest dialog, and serious introspection.
I am so overwhelmed with the insults and empty threats from coastal, urban, limousine Liberals, that I am tried of arguing.
Seeing as how the military overwhelmingly supports Trump, if Werleman wants a war against Flyover Land, he’s going to have to do it himself.
I which case, all I want to say is “bring it, asshole.”
–
*Evidence of Werleman’s anti-Zionist antisemitism.
The media, in their rampant desire to destroy Trump, decided to spill the beans on Trump’s meeting with Kirs Kobach by using a zoom lens to read the paper that Kobach was carrying.
Rachel Maddow went nuts with this on Twitter.
Knowing that this is the level to which the media will stoop. If I ever got elected to public office, I am going to have to pull an Operation Fortitude on the press.
All of my cover sheets will be on official letter head but will contain nothing but fake to do lists to troll the media.
Step 1) Establish a National Strategic Alligator Reserve in the Louisiana bayou.
Step 2) Use voter rolls to identify Democrat voters.
Step 3) Detain suspected Democrats using DHS.
Step 4) Feed Democrats to strategic national alligators.
Step 5) Appoint self President for Life.
Wife: “There was a rally of 200 people in Washing DC doing the NAZI salute, questioning is Jews were people.”
Me: “OK.”
Wife: “I don’t know if we should be worried.”
Me: “I’m not. It’s only 200 people. I have at least ten times that in 223 in the safe.”
Wife: *frowny face*
