Army of Dog

I’m ready to begin the Bacchanalian celebration of feasting and firearms alongside every other red-blooded American who understands the nature of our freedoms and the ease with which they can be taken away. That being said, I can’t help but feel like this decision was more of an escape than a victory. In a case about whether or not the state can impose virtually limitless restrictions on the Second Amendment protections of the American people, four of nine justices think that they can. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard someone ask in a frustrated tone, “how can liberals place such high value on First Amendment protections and then advocate violation of the Second Amendment in the next breath?” I think the answer to that question can be summed up best by this foul piece of logic by Justice Stevens in the dissent:

In a dissent he summarized from the bench, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that the majority “would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons.”

Read that steaming pile of excrement again and substitute the phrase “political dissent” for “uses of weapons” and you get an idea for just how insane the statement is. Yes, you doddering old fool, that’s exactly the choice they made. And with every reaking, half-assed justification for “common-sense gun control” that emanates from the festering gobs of wannabe tyrants on the left, the timeless wisdom of that choice becomes more clear.

The struggle over the gun issue, in which we have no doubt won an important victory today, is a small, but significant, battle in a war we are losing badly. At the risk of pissing all over an otherwise happy occasion, if we lose on issues like nationalized health-care, government takeover of industry, suicidal foreign policy, and, God help us, climate change, the joy of this victory will vanish like an illegal immigrant with a deportation hearing.

The goal of all of this is, of course, dependency. Cradle to grave, suckling at the public teat, helpless as a baby chick dependency. The more dependent you are, the more control they have, and the more control they have, the better able they will be to usher in their utopian vision of perfected humanity. Sure, they may be taking away a little freedom now and then, but it’s for your own good, you see. One day, when their vision comes to pass, it will all be worth it.

Still, today feels pretty damn good, and I, for one, intend to celebrate by adding something black and scary-looking to the Army of Dog arsenal. Or perhaps, in honor of the long-overdue demise of the DC ban, another 1911. Hell, maybe both, you see I’m just whimsical that way.

Japan, the favorite model for gun-grabbers, experienced an event whose very title belies the criminal nature of disarming private citizens, a “mass stabbing.”  Seven people, six men and a young woman, were killed and another dozen were injured when a “suicidal” nutbag ran his truck into a crowd and started stabbing people at random.

A man went on a stabbing spree Sunday in a Tokyo neighbourhood famed for comic-book subculture, killing at least seven people and leaving around a dozen injured in Japan’s deadliest crime in years.

The assailant, who later told police he was “tired of living,” drove a truck into a crowd of pedestrians shortly after noon in Tokyo’s bustling Akihabara area before jumping out and stabbing strangers while screaming.

The assailant was identified as Tomohiro Kato, 25, from central Shizuoka prefecture. He first said he was a gangster before retracting his story.

“I came to Akihabara to kill people. It didn’t matter whom I’d kill,” he was quoted by Jiji Press as telling police.

Did you ever think that you’d long for the good old days, when anti-social losers would just kill themselves with a shotgun and blame hidden messages in heavy metal records?

By the time Kato finally dropped his knife with an officer’s gun pointed at him, 17 people lay bloodied on the street of the crowded district, according to fire department and police officials.

Kato had blood running down the side of his face as he was taken into custody.

Jiji Press and other Japanese media said seven people were dead — six men aged 19, 20, 29, 33, 47 and 74, and a 21-year-old woman.

The attack fell on the anniversary of the last incident of similar magnitude — a stabbing frenzy that left eight children dead at a Japanese elementary school in 2001.

Well, what do ya know?  It turns out that having a gun does in fact put a damper on the melee habits of knife-wielding psychopaths.  Who’d a thunk it?  And this has happened twice for Christ’s sake?  It’s bad enough that people die in this country when some asshole takes a gun into a crowd of forcibly-disarmed citizens and does this kind of damage, but a fucking knife?!  If you need an example of just how fucking defenseless the castrated douchebags at Handgun Control and their ilk want you to be, just imagine 17 injured in a public place by a loser with a survival knife.

The elementary school attack stunned Japan, which prides itself on its safety, and authorities moved to step up security at schools.

In another knifing spree, a man in 1999 drove into the main train station in the southwestern city of Shimonoseki and stabbed to death five people.

Japan tightly restricts guns. But in December last year, a licensed hunter with a vendetta barged into a private gym in the western town of Sasebo and shot dead two people.

This is happening in a racially homogenous, ancient society that views conformity as an extreme social virtue (all of which is ignored completely by the self-righteous Brady assholes when their beating us over the head with Japan’s crime statistics).  I wish to whatever god is out there that we could all just learn one simple fucking lesson:  You cannot keep the wolves from attacking the sheep, all you can do is arm the sheep and try to give them the advantage.  Of course this idea will never be accepted by the twerps that campaign for “sensible” gun control because it’s not an idea that makes them feel all warm and fuzzy.  And God knows, in the world of liberal self-gratification, dead, defenseless citizens are a small matter.

Of course, this whole incident is probably just a result of Japan’s “sword-obsessed culture” anyway, so, never mind.

At the risk of turning this blog into a running commentary on the local paper, I found a fascinating dichotomy in the “Letters to the Editor” section of the Sunday edition. The first letter is from James Long of Dallas. I don’t know James at all of course, but now, thanks to the miracle of nineteenth-century technology, I can say with confidence that James is an economic idiot. Here’s his letter:

Re: “Economy needs Bush cuts,” by Alan Walne, Monday Letters.

What we could do is let the Bush tax cuts for those making more than $200,000 per year expire and increase taxes on these individuals. These tax savings could be passed on to those individuals making less than $200,000 per year. That way, there would be no actual overall tax increase and the economy would benefit. This would make the Bush tax cuts permanent, with just different individuals receiving the cuts. This is sound economic policy and necessary to future economic growth.

James Long, Dallas

If you work for a company or do most jobs that pay less than $200,000 per year, there’s a word for people who make more than that amount. “Boss,” from the Latin for “the guy who signs your fucking paycheck.” Economics is complicated, but this aspect of it is painfully damn simple. If the government takes more money away from your boss, he or she will have less money to either pay you or hire more people like you. I realize that throws a serious wrinkle in your whole “I’m jealous, so I’ll vote for the guy who promises to take away their money” theory of economic prosperity, but it’s true. So, I say this out of love and concern, grow the fuck up and stop whining about people who make more money than you.

If you want to be richer, then use your talents, time, creativity, and effort to build something that generates wealth. It’s not as easy as sitting around whining about how much the bastard down the street makes, but I guarantee you that it will get you a lot closer to your goal. And it will save those of us who understand basic fucking economics the time and trouble of working hard to cancel out your vote.

That brings us to our second letter on the same subject. This one comes from Gary Anderson of Anna, Tx. Anna is a small town north of Dallas, and it is home to at least one certified economic genius as far as I’m concerned. Here’s Gary’s letter:

Last weekend, I was reading the annual feature in Parade magazine called “What People Earn.” Now I’m an average guy, with average earnings. Last year, Miley Cyrus made $18.2 million, Tiger Woods made $115 million and Oprah Winfrey made $260 million.

I don’t begrudge these folks for making a lot more in one year than I’ll make in a lifetime. In fact, I applaud it.

What I do begrudge, however, is the fact that we gripe and moan about CEOs making millions of dollars and want to penalize them for it. Why do we have a double standard when it comes to athletes and entertainers?

We worship celebrity, but still want to stick it to the man. Well, the man keeps food on my table, clothes on my back and gas in my tank. Celebrities and politicians do not.

Gary Anderson, Anna

Certified fucking genius. I can’t tell you the warm, fuzzy feeling I got when I first read this letter. Here’s someone who isn’t rich, in fact he probably makes about the same amount of money that our friend James does, but he has grasped the fundamental truism that “the man” not only creates wealth for the economy as a whole, but also creates the jobs that “working people” need.

The problem, ultimately, is that there are a lot more Jameses than there are Garys. And as long as the Jameses are steeped in their ignorance, there will be politicians willing to exploit their sentiments. Hence the appeal of the Obamessiah to “working people.”

When Seung-Hui Cho went into that building and began shooting, he opened what may well be one of the darkest chapters in modern American collegiate history. The one-year anniversary of the event is being used by gun-control advocates to try to make us all defenseless, per their usual position. According to the Dallas Morning News, they are using a bunch of useful idiot college students to protest a proposed law that would allow students and faculty who hold concealed carry permits to carry their guns on campus.

Students gathered Wednesday in front of Dallas City Hall on the anniversary of the Virginia Tech shootings to remember those who died and to protest legislation that would allow guns in schools.

For each one of the students and teachers who died in the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history, 32 students remembered the victims by lying on the ground. As the name of each victim was read, a bell tolled.

A total of about 100 elementary, high school and college students gathered for the event.

The event was echoed in other cities as more than 80 communities and colleges planned similar protests about guns on campus, said the North Texas Brady Campaign, which describes itself as a group that works to prevent gun violence.

Let’s see, meaningless gesture designed to gain attention? Check. Blatant exploitation of children far too young to understand the issue they’re being asked to protest? Check. Dishonest attempt to connect a policy position with a monopoly on the desire to stop something that everyone agrees is bad? Check. Looks like we have all of the core ingredients of a leftist exercise in ghoulish self-aggrandizement.

We are, of course, treated to the usual breathtaking logic of gun-control advocates.

“We at El Centro (College) say it’s time to do more to stop gun violence, especially in our schools,” said student president Ashley Holmes in a news release. “School is not a place for guns. We have campus police and Dallas police available for our protection,” she later said at the event.

That must have been the problem at Virginia Tech, they didn’t have campus or local police available to intervene. What’s that? They did have campus police and it was thirty minutes into the shootings before they showed up and another five minutes before they made their way in the building and up to the floor where they found the gunman dead?

The stupidity continues.

Some Spruce High School student council members from Dallas who joined the crowd said they were worried that states were considering laws that would allow weapons at schools.

“It’s important that we are here together to stop the law from passing,” said Sanjuanita Hernandez, 18. “There is already enough violence happening, we don’t need more.”

And there we have the crux of the issue. The point upon which leftist gun-control advocates and sane people will never seem to find common ground. In the world of lefties taking guns away from law-abiding citizens who carry them for self defense will keep criminals and psychopaths from using guns to kill innocent people. Just how in the hell that happens no one seems to know. They just believe it and it doesn’t matter if banning guns makes you more, less, or equally safe, because as long as they can feel better about the situation, actual results are meaningless.

In the hopes that some of the people who hold these types of positions on the gun issue are actually open to logic, let me say this. When a criminal decides to attack you, whether it’s with a gun, a knife, or their bare hands, the only way a police officer will be able to help you is if he happens to be standing nearby when the attack happens. Otherwise, the only real chance that most people have to avoid serious harm is dumb luck.

There are a number of people who are not willing to place their own fate or that of their loved ones in the hands of fortune. Those people will choose to be armed with a gun. Most of them will choose to learn everything they can to use that gun safely and effectively in a life-or-death situation. Many of them will be willing to put themselves in harm’s way to protect you in the event of an attack. In short, they are ready, willing, and able to meet the kind of threats we hear about on the news every day. Instead of attempting to deny them their choice, why not be thankful for them and pray that one of them is nearby if, God forbid, the day ever comes that you need them.

I like to troll the internet looking for morons, it’s a target-rich environment as they say. For example, someone writing a letter to the editor arguing that being armed makes one more likely to be attacked.

Re: “I now have a fighting chance,” by Lawrence Bradford, Thursday Letters.

Mr. Bradford writes in support of the “castle law” that, in his 40 years of living in Texas, he’s been shot at and threatened several times. He also offers the fact he’s now almost always armed.

As a nearly 45-year-old native Texan, I can say with a straight face that I’ve never been shot at. Then again, I’m never armed.

I can’t help but wonder if there’s any correlation between always being armed and finding oneself the target of attack.

Melody Townsel, Dallas

To be fair, she didn’t actually argue anything, she just insinuated it in the most condescending manner she could come up with. No support of her claim except the anecdotal evidence of her own experience. This is why I love blogs, if she had posted something like this on a public forum or blog, I could immediately respond with scorn, derision, and possibly a fancy argument to thwart hers. When it shows up in a newspaper, all I can do is blog about it or go out and punch a hippie to make myself feel better. The hippie is in the corner crying.

And yes, the Melody Townsel who wrote the letter is probably this woman:

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration’s nominee to be ambassador to the United Nations once threw a file folder and a tape dispenser at an American businesswoman in Moscow, disparaged her weight and alleged she was gay in an attempt to get her to withdraw criticism of a foreign-aid project, the woman said Wednesday.

In a telephone interview, Melody Townsel, who heads her own public relations firm in Dallas, discussed allegations she made in a letter to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee before the panel began confirmation hearings on John Bolton, who was until recently the State Department’s top diplomat for arms control.

Bolton’s nomination is in jeopardy because of last-minute objections by Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, who told the committee Tuesday that allegations about Bolton’s behavior suggest he does not meet standards of propriety appropriate for such an important position. Faced with objections from Voinovich and at least two other Republican senators, the committee agreed to postpone a vote on Bolton’s nomination until next month.

She writes letters to the Dallas Morning News on a pretty regular basis, all with a left-wing slant to them. All of this means that we were denied the continued service of the most effective UN ambassador in history by a fucking idiot. Swell.

As if we needed further evidence that the “call 911 and wait for the police to handle it” school of home defense is the refuge of pusillanimous bastards, we have this story:

Woman Shot and Killed While Calling 911 to Report Intruders

We can’t say for certain that having a firearm in the house would have saved this woman’s life, but this case once again illustrates that the police cannot protect a homeowner from an immediate threat. Every individual and family must be responsible for their own safety, and the insidious argument that we should surrender that responsibility to “authorities” should be met with scorn, derision, and frankly violence if the feckless bastards ever try to enforce such dependency through confiscation.

This point can be illustrated further with another story that occurred in one of the suburbs close to where I live:

Frisco home intruder shoots man after confrontation

Steven Geddie, 24, heard someone breaking into the back door of his home in the 8400 block of Hickory Street around 6 p.m., police said. He told police he grabbed a shotgun and confronted the man in a hallway.

The two exchanged gunfire, and the intruder fled. Mr. Geddie suffered a minor wound in his left arm and refused to be taken to the hospital for treatment, police said.

Keep in mind that in this part of the world and at this time of year, 6 p.m. is still daylight. That means that an armed criminal broke into an occupied home in broad daylight. We can assume from that set of circumstances that the criminal had already decided that violent confrontation was an acceptable outcome of the act if not the goal itself. If the homeowner were not armed with a shotgun, we would very likely be reading a news blurb about a murder instead of a home invasion. And yet, there are those who would tell you that the homeowner should be forced to rely on government for protection from such threats.

The local rag has taken a break from painting anyone who doesn’t support “comprehensive immigration reform” as a virulent nationalist to breathlessly report on a tragic series of events that took place over the weekend in a an area just east of the Metroplex. The short version is that two teenage boys decided to check out the loud music coming from a nearby party around 10:30 Saturday night . They climbed over their neighbor’s fence and were in the process of sneaking past the front porch on their way through the yard when the 74-year-old homeowner fired a shot from inside the house. The bullet struck one of the boys in the arm. The other boy’s mother, who happened to be a nurse, decided to rush the wounded teenager to the hospital in her car. On the way to the hospital they were struck head-on by a drunk driver and the 41-year-old mother was killed.

The reporters writing the story gave a surprisingly even-handed account of what took place:

“We kept hearing music, so we wanted to go check it out,” Brandon said in a telephone interview from his bed at Parkland Memorial Hospital. “We walked across this dude’s yard. I heard the window blinds move, and I told Devin. … I heard gunfire, and we ran.”

Not realizing Brandon was hit, both boys darted back to Devin’s home. Brandon’s arm went numb. He looked in a bathroom mirror and saw the blood.

The boys woke Ms. Nalls, who instinctively rushed them to her pickup and headed for the hospital.

Ms. Nalls was killed minutes later in the accident, which also ruptured Brandon’s spleen. Devin suffered minor injuries and was released from the hospital Sunday.

That is, unless you count little gems like this one:

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