Showing posts with label Guns. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Guns. Show all posts

Monday, May 6, 2013

Before anyone starts panicking too much over 3D Printed guns, ask yourself one thing...

...how are the Gun Manufacturers going to take this?

Because if the Record Industry vis-a-vis any File Sharing Service in existence, it ain't gonna be pretty.

Yeah, these knobs are reaching in and leaving them with empty rice bowls this Christmas.  They're showing the world how to make their own guns, and putting the plans up on in the internet.

If you're Smith and Wesson, you can't be happy about this.  Even if you get into the game yourself, you still are seeing a segment of your market walk out your front door.

Don't be surprised if the NRA (our normal enemy in these matters) takes a very dim view of these 3D Printed guns, because after all...who do they really work for??

Via TPM:

The world's first 3D-printed gun, called "the Liberator," was successfully fired in Texas this weekend, according to Fox News.

Defense Distributed, an Austin, Texas-based company led by 24-year-old law student Cody Wilson and several others that market 3D printed firearms and firearm components, or “Wiki Weapons,” on Thursday posted a new video online showing a plastic gun being fired. A blueprint file is expected to be available for download today.

"I recognize that this tool might be used to harm people," Wilson said, according to Fox News. "That’s what it is -- it’s a gun. But I don’t think that’s a reason to not put it out there. I think that liberty in the end is a better interest."

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called the development "stomach-turning" on Sunday, according to CNYcentral, saying it means anyone "can open a gun factory in their garage."

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

The President's Complete speech from Minneapolis on Gun Control (VIDEO)

Much shorter speech than advertised. Only 14 minutes or so.

First the introduction:




And the speech itself:



This was really a low key speech. Even the audience seemed off. Though the mention of Todd Jones as ATF Chief seemed to get a rise out of them.

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

@SenatorDurbin calls bull@#$% on Wayne LaPierre (VIDEO)

@ShuttleCDRKelly breaks the bad news about yet ANOTHER mass shooting in Phoenix, AZ (VIDEO)

Charles Grassley...one of the dimmer bulbs in the Senate (VIDEO)

...bullshitting his way through his job, yet again.

@ShuttleCDRKelly makes me proud to be an American (VIDEO)

Former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords makes me proud to be an American (VIDEO)



I have to say, that as proud as this made me...I would have preferred to live in a world, where Rep. Giffords was never injured, never had to prove her mettle in fighting though her recovery, and she was merely serving the people of Arizona, and that we never heard of Jared Lee Loughner.

Monday, January 14, 2013

Why are Gun Owners trying to do to me what they only THINK the Government is doing to them?



Listening to Randi Rhodes tell the story of her former Father-in-Law having the temerity, the presumption to bring a loaded firearm into her home really really got me thinking. How much of this Gun Debate is really about people with Guns soooo used to getting their way in all things?

I mean, look at the NRA. Its whole history has been built on the premise that...well...you don’t mess with them...that and keeping guns out of the hands of certain people.

Yeah, a lot of this is tied into race. If young white people were dying at the same clip young black people were dying because of gun violence, the NRA would be the most toxic Lobby in America.

Well, unfortunately it happened to a bunch of young white children in Newton,and America finally had enough. Thing of it is, the African-American community has been facing their own Newtons every day for years now. It was just a nice reminder that Black Lives never count for as much as White ones.

Now that America has finally had enough, it looks like we’re going to get at least Universal Background checks, and maybe even a closing of the Gun Show Loophole. You do those two things, and all of the sudden an Assault Weapons Ban becomes a nice thing to have, but not necessary for the protection of the nation. (That being said, I’d still like to have see the Assault Weapons Ban passed).

What has the NRA’s reaction to this otherwise mild legislative rebuke? Well, they’re shaking their fist and trying to threaten and bully us. They’re saying an Assault Weapons Ban won’t pass. Conveniently leaving out the part where it may not be necessary. Then again, given their history of selectively quoting the Second Amendment, can we be surprised?



But there it is again. When in doubt, threaten. When in doubt, demand. No negotiation. No discussion, which is what you’d expect in a Democracy. For them, it’s always my way or the Highway.



I’m glad this two-bit Terrorist, James Yeager is so concerned about my rights that he’s willing to kill people for it.. If it were up to me, we would round up all the guns. But you know what? We can’t. Why? I’ve read the Constitution. Why hasn't James Yeager?  This supposedly a document he loves. This is supposedly the simplest of the amendments...he somehow keeps misquoting:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

By the way, the State of Tennessee, where he resides, has gone that inch further, and suspended his license to carry a firearm. Now what’s he going to do?

I shudder to ask, which brings me to the thing that has bothered me all this time.

What are my rights as a non-gun owner?

I feel that I have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness...and to not have those things taken away from me by a nut with a gun.  And I have the right to these things with or without a gun.

Gun advocates, apparently disagree.

It’s a question that Randi has posed a number of times on her show, but listening to Yeager, and every other gun nut out there, you hear a couple of common refrains. They need their guns to fight off the Government, to "preserve Liberty" as they call it.

Hmmm.  Let's think about it.  Why would they feel the need to fight the Government? Well, probably to prevent them doing stuff they don’t much like.

Like say, being forced to do something, whether they wanted to or not?

Like say...buying a gun??

Why are the Gun Nuts of the world definitely trying to do to me what they only imagine the Government doing to them???

I don’t want a gun. I don’t want a gun anywhere near me. I don’t want Guns anywhere near where I live. That’s a free market choice I’ve made for myself.

But in Gun Nut land, that's the only choice I have.  It's the only choice people like Alex Jones and James Yeager want me to have.

That is the only solutions to any gun problems really being offered by the NRA and their affiliated Gun Nuts. Well, they have their guns. They need to keep their guns, and if you really want to feel safe like we do, you need to buy a gun like we did.

And there you have it.

My fellow citizens trying to dictate to me how I should live. There are my fellow citizens daring to impose their values on me whether I want them or not. This is the very thing that Gun Nuts say they’re afraid of the Government doing, yet here they are doing it to me instead.

Seriously, what’s the difference between the Gun Nuts and their Fascist state of their dreams (or is it nightmares, I get ‘em confused)??

Get it through your head, I DON’T WANT A GUN!!! And you have no right to demand that I buy one.

Yet here you are, demanding just that.

You’re willing to fight for (and apparently kill) to preserve your freedom. Mine you could give a @#$% about.

You don’t care about the Government. You don’t care about the Constitution. You sure as hell don’t care about your fellow citizens. All you do care about is holding on to the illusion of safety you get from having a gun, and damn everyone who gets in your way.

Only now you want me to get your Cancer. In fact, you insist on it. Your paranoia is more important than my safety, our liberty, or our collective sense of peace.

Well, guess what??  You’re going to lose this time, because you and your Lobby have finally gone too far.

You know what’s the worse part of this? Everything you’ve suggested, everything you say you want is the perfect solution for the true constituency of the NRA, the gun manufacturers.

No matter what the problem, what the cause, the solution for the NRA is always the production, distribution and sale of more guns. How else do we view their “idea” about Armed Guards in public schools? Never mind that an armed guard didn’t stop shootings in Colorado.

This is a cheap con, perpetrated by people who stand to make a lot of money off the sale of a lot of guns, and their willing sheep willing to be bought and sold by their fear, and willing to push us around in the process.

I’m glad America has finally decided to take on the NRA. It’s overdue.

Thursday, July 26, 2012

President Obama Speaks at the National Urban League Convention (VIDEO)



This is the speech where the President talks about sensible Gun Control. Because guess what? He's going to lose the Gun Lobby vote.

Friday, June 22, 2012

Your everything-you-need-to-know-complete guide to Fast & Furious...

Lordy, this is gonna be a long one.

I’m getting a little tired of supposedly smart people like Jon Stewart screwing up the Fast and Furious story, so I decided to do a little research on my own. My starting point was the rather well-laid out timeline Randi Rhodes started with on her June 20, 2012 Broadcast. She used the Wikipedia listing for ATF Gun Walking which itself used a Washington Post Story from July 25, 2011 about Fast and Furious to get its facts. But even she missed some things that need to be highlighted. Lord knows, Stewart screwed this thing up in his last two appearances with an appalling Fox News level of accuracy.

So, after the jump, I’m going to open with the Wikipedia page before some NRA doucebag steps in and makes bullshit changes to it. It also happens to be the piece Randi Rhodes read pretty much word for word opening up her June 20, 2012 Broadcast.

Click here to see the whole thing.

How Jon Stewart and the fine folks at @TheDailyShow @#$%ed up Fast and Furious (VIDEO)

It started on June 20th:


Again, Jon's version of events demands you being stupid enough to believe Darrell Issa's version of events. Up until now, I never thought Jon was that stupid, but stranger things have happened.

Here's the thing, to believe Issa's version of events, you have to believe that the Acting Head of the ATF, by his own admission, knew nothing about what the ATF Phoenix Field Office was doing, but somehow the U.S. Attorney General did.

Oh, and did I mention that the Acting Head of the ATF is Issa's Star Witness, and thought he was going to get fired by the Administration, which is why he went running to Issa in the first place? Purely a coincidence, I'm sure.

And then, Jon doubled-down the next day, June 21st:


First off, it actually began with an Operation called Wide Receiver in the Bush Administration before being killed and record as Fast and Furious, and the stated purpose actually made some sense. The ATF wanted to allow these purchases to track the firearms as they were transferred to higher-level traffickers and key figures in Mexican cartels, in theory leading to their arrests and the dismantling of the cartels.

Problem was, ATF let the purchases happen, they tracked the guns to the people who were using them, who were hired thugs, not the major players in the Cartel.  Since the purchases didn't go high enough up the chain of command, ATF let the purchases keep happening, hoping they'd get someone better so they could make an arrest. In fact, indictments didn't start happening until Obama became President.

And, to be clear, we lost 1400 guns, still an appalling figure, but...c'mon, Jon, that's the kind of Bullshit Fox News engages in.

Then there's the letter. That was my major problem with the bit. Jon kinda left out the part where the Head of the Phoenix Field Office, may have...you know...lied to the Justice Department about the existence of the program.  That could be because Justice told him in 2009 not to engage in Gunwalking (but didn't do it clearly enough), and he went ahead and engaged in it anyway.

I know, details, details.

I would like to know why the hell did Stephen Colbert have a better grip on the damn story than Stewart did?


A complete, unadulterated guide to my problems with what Jon Stewart said will be published in about 30 minutes.




Thursday, June 21, 2012

Issa gets his information from a break-your-windows paranoid blogger. (VIDEO)

Darrell Issa, once a liar, always a liar.



To be sure, Congress has a legitimate interest in investigating Operation Fast and Furious, but Chairman Issa and Republican majority on the Committee appear to be more interested in scoring political points than in getting to the bottom of what happened," argued Keegan, who added that, “The hoops the Committee is demanding the Attorney General jump through illustrate that these contempt hearings are as partisan as they are extreme. Over the course of this ‘investigation,’ the Committee has ordered the A.G. to produce documents whose confidentiality is protected by federal law, has refused to subpoena Bush Administration officials to testify about their knowledge of the operation during their time in office, has refused to allow public testimony from officials whose testimony counters Issa’s partisan narrative, and has repeatedly rejected the A.G.’s efforts to accommodate the committee, making compliance all but impossible.

People for the American Way president Michael Keegan.

Monday, April 9, 2012

Billboard Racism... (VIDEO)

Saw these stories in a couple places today, but Jonathan Capehart was the first to collect them both together:

“Long live Zimmerman” was spray painted on a wall outside the Frank W. Hale Jr. Black Cultural Center at Ohio State University on April 5. In a tweet that morning, university President E. Gordon Gee called it a “Deplorable act of intolerance.” As you see in the video [below], the message was removed.



“Trayvon A N-----” was the message to motorists on one of those electronic construction signs early this morning on Interstate 94 in Michigan. According to Shawn Ley of WDIV-TV in Detroit, the computer keyboard used to type those highway messages was torn out and stolen from the metal box on the back of the construction sign.


Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Questions about the Trayvon Martin shooting...

This list started out with one question, and quickly grew to many. I would love to add more.

This is not a list of political questions, these are all questions that could be (or rather should be) asked at a Legal proceeding, and answered with hard documentation.  The fact that we don't know the answers...and may never know the answers...to these questions terrifies me.

In the end, I think George Zimmerman is going to get away with murder, because the Police have hopelessly botched the case.  I also think they hopelessly botched the case on purpose.

Where is the gun?

Where are Mr. Zimmerman’s clothes, along with any physical evidence of an assault?

If you needed these pieces of evidence, now way after the date, could the Sanford Police Department get them from Mr. Zimmerman?

Where is Mr. Zimmerman now? Could the Sanford Police Department find him if they needed to?

Is there any documentation backing up the claim that Mr. Zimmerman was assaulted?

Is there a Medical Report showing that Mr. Zimmerman was assaulted?

Was an ambulance called to treat Mr. Zimmerman because of this alleged assault?

Where there photographs taken at the scene? Of Trayvon’s body, of Mr. Zimmerman’s head and face?

Why did the Sanford Police Department  hold onto Trayvon’s body for three days without identifying him?

Did anyone at the Sanford Police Department make any attempt to look at Trayvon’s phone during those three days?

Who made the decision to hold onto Trayvon’s body for three days without identifying him?

What position was Trayvon found in?

Was Trayvon shot in the back or front?

Were any nitrate tests done on Mr. Zimmerman’s hands to determine if he had fired a weapon? If not, why not?

Were any nitrate tests done on Trayvon to determine how close he was to the weapon that killed him? If not, why not?

If the Lead Homicide Investigator was overruled at the scene as to whether or not to charge Mr. Zimmerman with manslaughter, who overruled him?

Who are the eyewitnesses to the assault?

Does the Sanford Police Department have records of testimony from these eyewitnesses to the alleged assault on Mr. Zimmerman?

What was Mr. Zimmerman’s height and weight at the time of the incident? What was Trayvon’s? (Goes to the relative threat Mr. Zimmerman is alleged to have faced).

What is the status of ALL the 911 Recordings from the night of the incident? Will they be released in their entirety?

Do we have a complete timeline of the incident, collating with hard evidence, because even Mr. Zimmerman’s own alleged account seems to leave out about a minute of time.

And because it can’t be asked enough...where is the gun?

If you've got any more, I'd love to hear 'em.

Now, it's also fair to ask Trayvon's parents some questions, but I'm betting I don't know the answer to these out of my own ignorance rather than a concerted effort to conceal them:

When did you call Police to report Trayvon missing?

Did you hear the shots?

Did you notice the Police activity nearby?

How close was Trayvon to getting back to his Dad's Girlfriend's place when he was killed? (I saw the walk through the father gave on Reverend Al's show, but all the distances were relative. I want to know in terms of feet and yards.)

Was the place where Trayvon was shot actually visible from the Girlfriend's House?

UPDATE: 10:54pm Pacific: Well, I got one of the answers. From Joy Ann Reid at the Griot (Thanks Dirk!)

A source with knowledge of the investigation into the shooting of Trayvon Martin tells theGrio that it was then Sanford police chief Bill Lee, along with Capt. Robert O'Connor, the investigations supervisor, who made the decision to release George Zimmerman on the night of February 26th, after consulting with State Attorney Norman Wolfinger -- in person.

Wolfinger's presence at the scene or at the police department in the night of a shooting would be unusual, according to the source. On a typical case, police contact the state attorney's office and speak with an on duty assistant state attorney; they either discuss the matter by phone or the on duty assistant state attorney comes to the crime scene - but rarely the state attorney him or herself.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

The complete Trayvon Martin... (VIDEO)

Video after video after video after video...

One of the earliest segments from MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry:

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Last night's Lawrence O'Donnell:

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And if you thought that segment was good, I thought this one was better:

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Big Eddie...

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And more Big Eddie...

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And Reverend Al's Two Segments:

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And Reverend Al's Interview with Trayvon's Father:

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