If only...

Once, just once, Huffington would consider an anti-gun bill as disturbing as an anti-gay bill it might actually change how people view them. 

I know - you do not like guns, do not want to own guns, do not understand guns.  But obviously many people do not like gay-sex (that is, they are hetero), do not want to have gay sex, do not want to marry someone of their own gender, and do not understand wanting to have sex with or marry someone of their own gender.  But you still seem to want them to support that right.

Fine...but...

More Disturbing Anti-Gay Bills Coming

Just once, please, think freedom instead of liberalism.  Tell the toadies in New York, California, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts and so on to stop trying to curtail the rights of law-abiding citizens to keep and bear firearms.  Perhaps then the heteros among us will care to tell the folks in Arizona and so on to stop telling law-abiding people who they can have sex with.  You consider gun owners crazies - why should people think any differently about gays?

Until then, you are wasting your outrage and hyperbole.

Pardon me for saying so...

But I wish the parents who raise assaultive children and then tragically lose them when they assault an armed man and are killed in self-defense would STFU.  Frankly, sir, it is sad that your son is dead, but raising a thug does not make you an expert.  I do not give a damn what you think.

What he wants is to change laws such that his son could assault and potentially kill someone without concern for being killed while doing so.  What he wants to do is excuse his son's misbehavior and the folly of him thinking that some "creepy-ass cracker" would not be ready to defend himself, that he was too bad ass to ever get killed. He wants a world where, apparently, behavior has no consequences.  It is the slow crawl toward that world that has bred adolescents who think assault is a game.  In this case, it was a game of death for Martin.

Your 15 minutes of fame are over - stop standing on the corpse of your son who was tragically killed for making a dumb decision, a son you didn't give a damn about when he was alive.  Your son was a thug who thought beating people up was fun - he made a bad wager and lost.  It is sad, it was unnecessary, but it was his own doing.

Just for the record...

This is stupid! This is not a gun issue, it is an issue of being stupid.  For all the anti-gun folks out there - since I am sure you have never heard them - there are four rules for gun safety.

1.  Treat all firearms as if they are loaded.  Even if you think you have unloaded it, refer to rule number 1.
2. Never point the muzzle (business end) at anything you are not willing to destroy (and remember rule number 1).
3.  Keep your finger off of the trigger unless you are willing to destroy the object in your sights (and remember rule number 1).
4.  Be certain of what you are aiming at - your target - and what it beyond it.

If I need to go through those and point out which ones this tragic figure violated, then you are close to being as stupid as he was.  It is not the firearm's fault when a person does stupid things, any more than it is the car's fault when people drive off the road and kill themselves and/or their families.

Yep - no doubt - those who have gun-phobia as well as gun-related intellectual disabilities will see this as more fodder for taking guns away from intelligent adults (Yes, Huffington Post, that one is for you).  But just as the actions of criminals should not be used to justify disarming us, neither should stupidity.

Here's the problem

 As I noted in my earlier post - there are a number of lessons to be learned form the Michael Dunn "Loud music" shooting. Of course, the one that most people are going to take home from it is summed up in one section of an article on Huffington Post:
 
As for what those options were, Valerie told ABC, "Roll your window up. Ignore the taunting. Put your car in reverse. Back up to the front of the store. Move one parking spot over. That's my feeling."

So this is the new world we live in, this is the way we should deal with people who decide it is their place in life to disrupt the social order?  Of course we cannot shoot people for loud music..thank God since mine has oft-times been loud. But now we have become a society of wimps, a passive group that will no longer insist that those around us hold up their end of the social contract.  So, the people next to you in the car, no matter who they are, decide that they want to be obnoxious?  Just ignore them, let them behave as badly as they want.

If you don't mind my saying so - or hell, even if you do - when we just let that happen, just give people their space to be obnixious, this is where we end up.  Dark Paradise!  So, yes, turn your back, roll up your window, move away, don't say anything.  Just hide and let them do as they wish.  But remember that one day they may decide to come play in your neighborhood, in your front yard, at your intersection.  They may be armed, they may not care who you are.

You may end up dead.  But at least you won't be accused of murder.

And, of course...

At Huffington Post, this is not a culture issue, it is a gun issue!

Refer back to my post yesterday - it all applies here as well.

1.  Don't think that the solution to every problem is to shoot someone.
2.  Don't think that you are invincible and that doing some3thing stupid like egging a person's car will be a "harmless" prank.  Clearly it wasn't.

Lots to learn for everyone here - unless, like most liberals, you simply make this a gun issue.

He ain't wrong...

So, as usual Huffington Post is all melodramatic about George Zimmerman (and anything to do with race or sexuality, but that's another day).  In this case, the big deal is that he won't say he's sorry for killing Trayvon Martin.

Of course, they will not be willing to leave this alone until or unless Zimmerman makes a full confession to facts not in evidence, the facts Huffington and their ilk believe regardless of the lack of evidence.  Of course, they want everyone to assume that anyone who would kill someone in self-defense is a murderer, went out looking for the opportunity.  I think Zimmerman does a good job of saying what we all know is true; no one wants to kill another human being (but no one wants to die) and doing so changes one's life in irreversible ways; "Certainly, I think about that night and I think my life would be tremendously easier if I stayed home.”

Would I be sorry for killing someone who was intent on killing me?  I would be sorry that it ever came to that, I would wish they had chosen a different course, but in the moment of the act of self-defense, the moment where it would be kill or be killed, then feeling sorry for it means you wish you had died instead.

This is not unlike the case of Michael Dunn in some ways, although he clearly should have made better decisions (like immediately call 911, stay on scene).  Those who believe that Zimmerman should be sorry are suggesting that his actions lead to the tragic ends; our modern society prefers villains and heroes, no one between.  In some ways, the same thing can be said of Dunn; if he had simply not said anything about the loud music being played by the cherubs in the car next to him, this whole situation would have been avoided.  Of course, Zimmerman had every reason to think, given the neighborhood history, that a crime was being planned.  Dunn had little more reason than annoyance.  But are we now a nation where there are no rules and no one has a right to ask others to respect their wishes?  Is our only recourse to ignore inappropriate behavior lest it end in violence?

Yes, the Dunn case, and even the Curtis Reeves shooting, offer some other good examples:

First, indeed it appears we are now a society where one cannot complain about the inconsiderate behavior of others.  "Can you believe he complained that the man was texting before the movie?"  "Can you believe he actually asked those youngsters to turn down their music?"  Whether it is loud music or texting, challenging someone else's right to be obnoxious, asking or even demanding that they conform to the social contract, is now unacceptable and can lead to violent confrontation. So we are all supposed to succumb to such boorish behavior.

Second, an important survival lesson; if you are young black and bad and an older white guy complains about your music or you are middle-aged and white and bigger than the old guy who confronts you, don't assume that you can throw your weight around or threaten the old codger.  Yes, your survivors may scream for justice and drone on about what a good guy you were, but showing your ass in such challenges - playing monkey games - can get you shot.  If you were a "good guy" you would have handled it differently, too.  Makes for a crappy day at the movies or night at the convenience store when you decide you are too bad to be asked to change and then end up shot.

Third; concealed carriers - think twice about how your behavior can lead to incidents just one small step at a time.  We often talk of boiling the frog - how small changes can pass by unnoticed until we find ourselves in too deep.  One small comment can lead to another, to yelling, shoving, fisticuffs, and shooting.  Yes, people around us can be (hell, are) obnoxious and disturbing and we may feel someone, anyone, needs to intervene.  But if you bring a gun to that situation, you are asking for trouble.

I am sure Zimmerman regrets that evening of his life - he says as much - clearly nothing good has come of his need to defend himself, to save his own life while creating lethal consequences for Martin.  It is even more likely that Dunn regrets his (for many reasons; from failing to call 911, to leaving the scene, which allowed the vehicle into which he shot to leave the scene and potentially be cleaned of all traces of the weapon he thought he saw).  I hope Reeves regrets allowing texting to become a shooting.

But I also imagine that the families of those who died - if they could for one moment stop making heroes of their kin and trying to absolve them of any guilt, trying to convince us that they played no part at all in the chain of events - would also regret the way those days progressed.

So what the hell is up with this?

Gun control for thee but not for me?  Ain't that something - a proponent and supporter of the SAFE act carries his pistol into an elementary school.  Of course, he didn't mean it ;<).

Meanwhile, a man was cited in violation of the SAFE act for having 10 rounds in the magazine in his 9mm pistol.  Of course, he meant it ;<).

Seems to me the folks in NY are going to have some issues to sort out.

It's a FUBAR world...

You know it's a world gone off the rails when people mourn and honor one man while no one pays attention to the anniversary of the passing of another. No death is to be lauded (well, maybe that's not always true), but the amount of attention a death receives is a telling tale of how our society is functioning, how healthy it is, what its values are. 

One was an actor; one whose talent, such as it was, was to entertain people, distract them from the real world of troubles, to provide the modern opiate of the masses; I hear little that suggests some form of selfless duty.  In a world that celebrates excess and talentless celebrity, he is mourned by those who did not know him for what they have lost, not for who he might have been - we conveniently ignore who those celebrities really are. 

The other was an unknown to most people, much as are all of his comrades; he did not entertain us, he merely served his nation when he was asked in relative anonymity.  Even now, I am sure most who mourn Hoffman have no idea who Chris Kyle was.

Both are useful to today's self-centered, media-driven world.  Hoffman is seen as a sad character, one who had such talent (again, if that is your thing) but wasted it.  In our celebrity-obsessed culture, he was seen as a person who might have had everything the sycophants could ever want and yet it was not enough.  A cautionary tale for sure of how no amount of fame can immunize one against  their own bad choices.  Kyle, for all of his commitment to his country and his fellow warriors, is seen by today's liberal culture as a cautionary tale of gun-nuttery.  A decorated sniper, one who had chosen to use the weapons that liberals find so objectionable to defend their freedom to object and sadly, died unnecessarily from such a weapon in the hands of a fellow warrior he was trying to help.  Perhaps one can make a case that both deaths were, in some way, self-inflicted, but one was a self-centered decent into despair, while one was a selfless, if ill-conceived, act of caring.

But what is more ridiculous is how quickly and rabidly the law has jumped on Hoffman's death to try to find someone other than Hoffman responsible.  It is only a brave journalist who would note that no one forced drugs on Hoffman or forces them on any one else (a commentary that the Huffington Post called "ugly"). Oh, the inhumanity of suggesting that people are responsible for their own behavior and the ends they reap.  Surely there must be a bad childhood, oppression, repression, discrdiscriminationrivation, or a disease at work?

No, no death is laudable, all untimely death is tragic, whether chosen or encountered.  But the death of a man who had dedicated his life to his country and to trying, in his own way, to help those who had served, deserves at least the same attention as the death of an entertainer, an actor, who made bad choices.  Both made some questionable choices, played a part in their own demise.

The response to Hoffman's death exposes a critical fallacy, a critical bias, in today's liberal thinking; it is at once hedonistic and self-absorbed with its own desires, own insistence on doing what it wants today while consistently absolving itself of all responsibility for the ends of those choices.