You know a newspaper is on its way down the drain of irrelevancy when uses Wikipedia for source material.

This was just posted at the Miami Herald Website.

PS: Kudos to Colombia for forcefully retiring the head of FARC and one of the greatest terrorist in South America. They used over 500 soldiers and some 60 aircraft to make sure the sucker did not make it out of his camp. Overkill works.

When I took English 101 in college (frightening experience for somebody who recently finished ESOL) one of the things I got chided about was how often I used cliches on my assignments. The teacher kindly explained that overused expressions are an easy way out but that they detracted from my work. The only thing I could tell him was that they were not cliches but rather fresh expressions for a foreigner like me.  He understood my position but still kicked my butt and I had to thank him for that.

That brings me to the most hated (by me) derogatory cliche used by media against any gun owner: Pistol Packing or its even more insulting Pistol Packin’. Do notice it is not Pistol Packing but Pistol Packin‘ as if we were missing a front tooth as to enhance the notion that people who carry guns are somehow crossbred retards.

How is it that deciding to be responsible for your own safety became a topic of derision by the “enlightened” ones is beyond me.  Then again this is America and if it is your choice to be an Useless Unarmed Idiot, you do have that right. And I do hope I don’t have to read your sob story on how a gang of miscreants used you as a ATM/Punching Bag/Sex Toy and ask me to feel sorry for you.

Appearing in Drudge is the following headline from the Sun Sentinel: Life in prison for stealing $4 package of socks. It instantly evokes the mishaps of Jean Valjean and his horrible sentence of 19 year for a loaf of bread, the injustice of a out of control justice system and society’s inability to deal with crime. Of course, after reading the article one must ponder if “reporters” Barbara Hijek and Gary Taylor spent the weekend watching a marathon of Twilight and Glee because the culprit, one Dean Rockmore was found guilty of not stealing $4 worth of goods but brandishing a gun to the Security Officer trying to stop him. Rockmore is a repeat offender with goodies in his record like Arson, Aggravated Assault on a Firefighter/Paramedic, trafficking stolen merchandise, violently resisting arrest with violence & forgery. His incarceration history goes back all the way to 1981so we are not talking about an innocent man driven by circumstances, Bush and the War in Iraq.

The jury seemed to reason along the same lines when they took under an hour to send Mr. Rockmore to spend a vacation in the custody of the State of Florida and Circuit Judge Margaret Hudson decided to make such vacation permanent.

Now why Barbara Hijek and Gary Taylor went with the stupid title? My guess they were fishing for a mix of good old heart tugging and righteous indignation out of the readers.  In the comment sections one reader simply stated: “What a douchebag of a newspaper.”

One must agree.

We all know people that talk guns and wants guns but “not for thee” and today I was approached by one of those guys at work. He is a nice enough fella, has his Concealed Carry permit and has even been on TV supporting the Castle Doctrine and how it helped him avert an incident with a criminal. But with the recent shooting in Liberty City where 2 people were killed and nine wounded by a shooter with an AK-type weapon, my buddy made comments about how those weapons should be banned. I was amazed that he would even utter such bullshit in my presence knowing well my stance on guns and the Second Amendment so after a brief discussion about what “The Right of The People To Keep and Bear Arms” really means (which he lost), he said something that opened my eyes to what was inside his mind.

“With an AK, they can spray you with bullets before you can do anything to defend yourself.”

That is when I realized that all his information about those Evil Black Rifles come from what he has seen and read in the News. No wonder he was so off the mark. I asked him if he thought the gun that was used was fully automatic, a machine gun and he said yes. When I told him that the chances of the weapon used were zilch to none being fully automatic, he did a double take. I told him about how fully automatic weapons have been heavily regulated since 1934 by the National Firearms Act, that the Hughes amendment in the Firearms Protection Act of 1986 basically banned the production and ownership of fully automatic weapons for civilians which in turn sent the prices of existing automatic weapons into the ionosphere. I asked him what were the chances that a Liberty City gangbanger would spend $25,000 for a full auto AK 47 to commit murder and then drop it in some canal, his response was a long silence.

So we are losing the Media War as usual. Nothing new. We are used to see them actively engaged in the transmission of lies about us and about guns in full complicity with those that would would love to tear the Second Amendment from the Bill Of Rights. The infamous CNN report when the Assault Weapons Ban was about to expire was a classic. For those who do not know the story, shortly before the Clinton Gun Ban was about to expire, reporter John Zarrela in collusion with Broward Sheriff Ken Jenne, created a fake video where they demonstrated how dangerous the “banned” gun were by using full automatic AK 47 and passing it as one of the guns about to be liberated from the ban. CNN made the mistake of interviewing Wayne LaPierre the next day and before they could do anything about it, Mr. LaPierre announced to God and Country that the video was a fake. CNN threw a hissy fit but at the end they had to recant the video and sort of (in a very rondabout way) that the initial report was not as accurated as they thought it should be…which is MediaSpeak for “Ooops, we were caught in another lie.”

After all is said and done, we can only do one thing: Keep educating folks and we we are facing a liar, stop being nice and call him a liar. Nice lost the last elections and nice will lead us to lose our rights. Time to stop being Mr. & Mrs. Nice.

PS: Sheriff Ken Jenne ended up prosecuted & plead guilty to federal tax evasion and mail fraud charges after a corruption investigation uncovered crimes in his outside business dealings. You can always tell the dishonest people and the causes they support.