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Nov 22, 2017
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It brings to mind x-ray image I saw while transporting patients down at Harborview in the 90's. There was a kid who had failed Suicide with hand gun. Plastic surgery had reformed his mouth to a fix round hole, like those kids in "The Wall", and from below is nasal cavity to his jaw were bone fragments as if a diner plate had been shattered. The look on the fathers face as he lead his son down the hall by the elbow was even more devastated.
We know that people who don't even have a history of suicide risk have a much greater chance of suicide due only to having access to a gun. We know this. People with a known history of risk all the more so. We know this already. It's like deciding to go test for yourself whether or not "this vaccine business" has anything to it. We know vaccines work. Or going out in your backyard and doing your own science if you can prove whether or not it's a good idea to drink bleach. Why trust real science when you can DIY, right, bro? Narcissistic twat.
We know that many, many, many intelligent people were raised around guns, have hunted, have been trained in firearms as part of the storied American gun heritage, or in the police, or in the military. They have fought in wars, and sometimes been shot, and sometimes they have shot at, and sometimes have killed people. It's not like we have ZERO examples of people who have been there and can tell you all about it. Memoirs and think pieces by these many many men and women who know all about this stuff exist in abundance.
I can sit here and tell you I've been there and done that and you can call me a liar because I'm some anonymous guy on the internet. Fair enough. Check the rest of the internet. Read books. Ask your librarian. Credible sources are everywhere.
This asinine gun kook argument that 'snowflake libs would melt in a puddle if they ever touched a real gun' is obviously bullshit. It doesn't cry out to be refuted because it has already been refuted since time immemorial.
Because these many, many, many men and women who know all about guns are intelligent, they will tell you that we must have gun control. Obviously! Because letting any fuckhead who wants a gun have whatever fucking gun he wants is fucking stupid. You don't need to know how it feels to carry a gun to grok that. But if have to ask, there are lots and lots and lots of trustworthy gun experts immersed in gun culture who can tell you that. The feeling of carrying a gun doesn't change that it's fucking stupid to let any fuckhead who wants one have a gun.
The reason gun kooks want free-for-all access to guns isn't because they know something everybody else doesn't know. It's because they're nihilists (nihilists like the alt-right, the racists, and most remaining Republicans) and because they're kooks.
This article is a stupid fucking stunt that answers questions that have already been answered and answer and answered. The only reason to do this jackass stunt is get attention and make it about yourself. Fuck you.
It is so much of a major, major...major pain-in-the-ass, that it baffles me why anyone would want to do it if they aren't literally required to. I mean, I now live in semi-rural area outside a quiet small town, but it's a redder than red area, so yahoos carry sidearms routinely out here all the time. My only thought is "WTF, it's not as if the Crips...or anyone...are gonna jack you for your car anywhere with 100 miles of here!" I guess compensating for other shortcomings is worth the pain-in-the-ass hassle of it , though...
The premise that decent people are to blame for our present kakistocracy because decent people didn't spend enough time among garbage people learning to appreciate their garbage values is a garbage person talking point.
Liberal cities have a very low birthrate. Cities did not grow from towns into cities into megacities by reproducing very fast. They grew by filling up with refugees from red state America. All those urbanites who vote for Hillary grew up in Trump country. They know it intimately. We don't need some smug little hipster going undercover among the white trash to report back to us what all those strange right wingers are thinking.
Clickbait trash.
You aren’t a liberal snowflake...you’re an IDIOT.
93 people die each day in the US by guns, 180 people critically injured each day by guns. No one thinks of the ones who didn’t die.
Big news a guy got a face transplant as he blew his face off putting the gun under his chin. Took everything off including one eye--nose, cheek bones, upper and lower jaw--GONE. He got the face from ANOTHER suicide who got it “right.”
BTW EIGHT children are shot each day in the good ole USA. Do you have ANY idea what a First Grader (20 at Newtown) looks like after being hit by three or four .223 rounds from an AR-15? Think of shredded Kleenex soaked in blood. Nothing left to identify.
A bullet expands as it enters the body and can leave a dinner size hole as it exits. It shreds blood vessels, liquefies organs, turns bones into shards and splinters. The people bleed out--can’t stitch them up.
There is NO godly reason for guns to exist in the 21st century. NONE.
In Hawai’i it’s nearly impossible to get a gun permit...takes about a month of bureaucracy--and HEY lowest gun deaths in America.
You have a gun in your home? Seven times greater chance of dying by a gun.
As far as suicide? Mostly guys (19,000 a year here) kill themselves with guns, because women don’t want to leave a mess.
My West Point grad spouse lost all our retirement savings and home in the recession. He invested in high risk stocks.
On November 29th, 2009 he borrowed a gun from an army buddy. He was depressed. It took me WEEKS to clean the blood, brain tissue, and skull fragments off the ceiling, redwood tongue and groove walls. And I was blamed for his death. (You must have been a terrible wife for him to commit suicide!-Yeah it’s just WONDERFUL.) I took a sledge hammer to that gun and smashed it until I could no longer stand up. My neighbors heard me screaming as I was making sure that piece of shit gun never killed another person.
Get rid of the goddamned things. It’s a substitute for a small cock.
Repeal the 2nd amendment.
OR Come work with me for 72 hours over a weekend in the emergency department in Chicago or Birmingham. You’ll see a four year old die out because his dumb father left a loaded gun out and his five year old friend picked it up and shot him. While you’re working on him, his arm keeps falling off the table so I tell you “Grab the 2 inch adhesive tape and wrap his body and arm together...at least when his mother sees him dead she won’t trip over his arm in the 6 inches of blood on the floor.
Work with me..and tell me how “both sides have a point.”
Idiot.
1. West Coast Armory is high class. I've bought weapons there, and it's the only indoor range I'll go to in our area. When you shoot at a public range, you need to be sure that rules will be enforced swiftly to keep people safe. WCA has no tolerance for people doing unsafe things. They also keep the air remarkably clean for an indoor range, which is important if you shoot a lot.
2. Your gun purchasing experience was facilitated by your concealed pistol license. Had you not presented a valid permit at point of sale, you would have had to wait five days to pick up the gun. A CPL functions as a sort of pre-clearance when it comes time to purchase, though you still have to pass the FBI NICS check.
3. Glocks excel at home defense, range shooting, and rugged outdoor use. They are not particularly comfortable to wear. While you were at WCA, I'm sure you saw the little mouseguns like the Ruger LCP. Your first inclination might have been to pass them off as a fashion accessory, but those little things recoil sharply and carry 7 lethal rounds. The paradox of concealed carry is that a small one is more comfortable to carry while a large one is more comfortable to shoot.
And, since the term "gun violence" is a catchword/cliche, the title suggests an unattainable goal. People have been robbing and killing other people, using the weapons of the day, since the beginning of man on this planet, which identifies the real issue - controlling criminal impulses in humans, not the otherwise legal instruments they use to commit crimes.
Anyone who doesn't realize and/or acknowledge this isn't thinking, s/he is 'feeling', and our liberty cannot depend upon what anybody 'feels'.
Stop "negotiating" excuses to INFRINGE on OUR RIGHTS.
If there must be background checks, let's try this idea...
Are there any ‘legislators’ that are interested in a Constitutional Background Check?
Since SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED means exactly that..
Let’s try a “Background Check” that DOES NOT INFRINGE on anybodies RIGHTS…
A FULL, IN DEPTH background check for ALL Politicians, Bureaucrats, and ALL government employees, and set MINIMAL INTELLIGENCE, JOB SKILLS AND CHARACTER QUALITIES that must be met before they can run for office, be appointed or hired.
That way, WE, THE PEOPLE, get a much better class of politicians and bureaucrats, as well as EMPLOYEES that can be trained to do the jobs they are being hired for.
Any bets on how hard the political class will fight to prevent it?
THAT would be a Background Check that nearly ALL AMERICAN CITIZENS will support and I don't much care if the illegals and their sycophants don't like the idea.
If the DSM is the standard by which Obama wishes to remove our rights to own guns, then I'd guess 90% of the American people could probably be classified with a mental disorder of one kind or another.
BEWARE, BEWARE
No, they don't.
The Constitution forecloses drastic burdens, impediments or bans on arms that are within the ambit of the amendment enumerated to protect the right to bear them.
In 1939 the SCOTUS in U.S. v. Miller ruled that "In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a 'shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length' at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument. Certainly it is not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment, or that its use could contribute to the common defense. Aymette v. State, 2 Humphreys (Tenn.) 154, 158. . . With obvious purpose to assure the continuation and render possible the effectiveness of such forces, the declaration and guarantee of the Second Amendment were made. It must be interpreted and applied with that end in view. . . [T]hese men were expected to appear bearing arms supplied by themselves and of the kind in common use at the time."
Translation: Arms "in common use" that have "some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia" and/or are "any part of the ordinary military equipment" are within the ambit of Second Amendment protection.
The right is the right, the constitutional enumeration is the constitutional enumeration, and the precedent is the precedent.
IOW, that argument is o-v-e-r.
So, why do some insist on beating that dead horse?
The second amendment guarantees the right to own and carry a gun, not to fire it.
We should require people who want to fire guns to be licensed to do so.
1) Walked around a street filled with poor drug addicted minorities, playing his own version of Dirty Harry.
2) Never put a gun in his mouth. for a fucking essay (Despite his struggle with depression that eventually ended his life).
What the fuck. You really think most people who are pro gun control haven't considered answers like "The right to drive isn't enshrined in the Bill of Rights, but gun ownership is." Hey Sean, the next step is to point out that FUCKING OWNING PEOPLE was once allowed by the laws of the land, that the constitution didn't consider women and minorities "people". But you know what, law's are fucking mutable.
Most people are pro some sort of gun control, but you know what, the fucking NRA has used racist fear to scare people into believing that "good god fearing american's" need guns. You know that fear and danger you where trying to find by walking on a street filled with poor, drug addicted minorities, that's the same fear that the NRA sells to prevent gun control. It's the same fucking fear that cops embrace when they shoot unarmed minorities. You know how those "good god fearing american's" say they need a gun to protect them and their family. Well, they're not picturing you, although as a white male with a gun you're statistically really fucking dangerous, they're picturing the people on yelser and 3rd that you made a point to walk by while packing. You know how those "good god fearing american's" say they need a gun to protect them from the government, otherwise the government is going to take their property and rights. Well, the last time the government took away mass "property" from white people was when it abolished slavery. The whole "I need to protect my property, my rights, and my family" is so fucking covered in racism, racism that you fucking embraced in this story.
Seriously, the Stranger should be ashamed of this. Imagine if any other newspaper decided to give a white male reporter a gun and told them to walk around in the area with a bunch of black drug addicts. You guys would lose your shit. Well fuck you.
All that "common use" shit is totally made up. The penumbra between several rights that implies the right to privacy is based on actual things that are there. There is no mention of "common use" in the Second Amendment. There is no "18 inches" rule in there. They made it up. The second Amendment guarantees the right to your own a nuclear tipped ICBM. As many as you want. The meaning is quite clear.
But obviously absurd, so they proceeded to start making shit up. Cool. They should make up a rule that says no self-loaders, no semi-automatics of any kind. No double action revolvers. Single action only. No magazine larger than 3 rounds. Or maybe 2. What the hell, right? Be grateful you aren't stuck with black powder muzzle loaders.
Or if the real point is to let citizens defend themselves from the might of the government of the United States, then nuclear weapons are in fact necessary. You can't reasonably expect the people to resist the might of a nuclear armed global superpower without their own nuclear weapons. But that is still fucking absurd. It's absurd any way you think about it. Admit it.
The should just repeal the Second Amendment because it's a stupidly written piece of shit. The basic grammar of the sentence isn't even clear. We are finally ready to admit they fucked this one up. Repeal the fucker and let the states do what they did for the first 150 years. Towns used to have signs saying "no guns in city limits" and that was that. Imposing these arbitrary 18 inch rules and "common use" made up bullshit from on high is a huge fucking joke. Everybody knows it's a joke.
The author captures the fear and uncertainly all new gun owners go through. I'm probably what folks would consider a 'rabid' pro-2A person and a Life Member of the NRA, but it took me months to adjust to carrying a firearm on a regular basis.
The author gets the feeling spot-on. Unlike the gun control lobby's party line, guns don't make good people feel powerful, they make make them feel responsible.
The one area I do think the author pandered to their own ignorance is their attitude towards the NRA.
The mainstream media loves to portray them as this huge organization who forces their will on politicians and dupes their members.
The reality is far, far different.
The NRA is a small organization, with an annual budget of around $300 a year. It's regularly given top marks by various charity watch groups for making sure the money they collect goes to 'end users', in their case safety training, competition, etc.
The 'political' part of the NRA is the NRA-ILA and the NRA-PVF, which together have a budget of less than $20 million a year.
To put that in perspective, ex-NYC mayor and gun control fanatic Michael Bloomberg spends at least $100 million a year keeping his "Mom's Demand..." and "Everytown..." groups afloat, He's spent well over a billion dollars on pushing gun control over the last 5 years alone.
Bloomberg has so much wealth he could pay the NRA's whole budget himself, for the next 100 years, and he would still be a multibillionaire. He could buy the entire output of US gun companies for 2017, and 2016, and 2015... Toss them all into the sea, and he'd still be a multi-billionaire.
The other myth is that the NRA somehow manipulates it's members.
This completely ignores that fact that the members vote on 1/2 the board of directors each year, and that several times the members have completely changed the face of the organization through these votes.
The 'Cincinnati Revolution' at the 1977 members meeting threw out the directors who were afraid to confront the brand new 'gun control' movement, leading to the 'no compromise' NRA we know today.
Unlike Bloomberg's astroturf groups, the NRA is a grass roots organization with over 5 million dues-paying members. They are a force not because they somehow manipulate the system, but because NRA members vote. Every. Single. Election.
That all being said, I do think this was an excellent article overall, and I applaud the author for breaking out of their comfort zone in such a bold way.
I really hope the authors stay at a mental hospital for his suicidal thoughts was voluntary.
If not, they are a 'prohibited person' and lied on both their CC permit and 4473 forms, making them guilty of at least one state and one federal felony.
I understand your journey, though I feel differently.
I was there in Vegas.
I was staying on that block of the Strip... had headed out for a late dinner.
Panic, chaos... bloody people running by... being trapped in a back hall and evacuated by LVMPD.
All very scary and surreal to say the least.
However, I've never wanted a gun less in my life.
Ammo choice is paramount to making a little machine like that work reliably.
The 19 is a pretty ideal weapon in most respects. I value mine immensely.
Do I need a license?
You also underestimate the effectiveness of the best .380 loads. Is it a .45? Of course not. But it's certainly better than a sharpened stick, and it'll fulfill the primary role of a carry gun, which is to get me out of a bad situation.
It appears that you view guns for their sex appeal. I don't give a shit about any of that. I want the most effective tool in the smallest, lightest, most reliable package. And just because you have trouble with a Glock double-stage trigger doesn't mean that the pistol isn't accurate. Just look at Larry Vickers shooting 250 meters with the Glock 10mm.
* Gun owners are several times more likely to take a bullet at some point than those who don't own a gun.
* We greatly inflate our capacity for rationality and objectivity. Essentially, we are hairless chimps with cell phones. And in many cases, chimps with guns, too. The tragic results of this are all around.
* A small fraction of any group of people is predisposed to violence in general and homocide in particular. We've made it exceptionally easy for these individuals to wreak tremendous havoc. This will continue unabated.
* Americans are intrinsically paranoid. Lotsa white folks are convinced the government will be coming for them one of these days. And when they say "government," what they really mean is brown people. These rotund crackers have armed themselves for a race war.
* The NRA has unwittingly done more for carbon mitigation than the most zealous advocacy group. Those many thousands of gun deaths each year equate to that much less carbon being spewed into the atmosphere. To the extent that these same victims' reproductive potential is curtailed, carbon reduction is furthered that much more.
Not sure why I read the whole article when the conclusion was easily foreseen. Personally, I carry most of the time and own an AR15. This writer brought a gun home and put it in his mouth...I hope he does not continue owning it.
You should have eaten that gun and removed another stupid moron from the planet.
Here's a hot tip. AARP and many other groups spend more $ on lobbying than the NRA.
Now, I 100% agree that making the decision to become a responsible (and armed) citizen is a life changing decision. You find that your attitude and actions change in almost every circumstance. You are much more concerned at being involved in any type of confrontation and do not go to places where either the tools are not allowed (e.g. No Gun Zones) or where the threat level is high.
In the US, the result is that over 2.5 million times every single year a violent crime is stopped/prevented by a legally armed responsible citizen.
D'oh!
Even though you don't have the proper mindset towards owning a firearm (in more than just being a hoplophobe), the 2nd Amendment protects your rights you waive so willingly, even if you obviously won't defend it.
That being said, I'm hoping you understand many, many others haven't contemplated suicide like you do, let alone attempted what you did in the article. Don't project your feelings and inner-turmoil onto us owners and then judge us all on your personal issues. Don't try to justify that you actually achieved an understanding of pro-Second Amendment citizens, because I saw that nowhere in your writing. You heard our side, but you weren't listening.
Proving that the author has no idea what he is talking about.
What is the first thing he does when he gets home with his new handgun? He sticks it in his mouth to see how it feels.
Reading the later parts of this article, where he uses his gun as a fetishised prop for his suicidal ideations, and then goes to a shitty part of town to see what it would feel like to be armed somewhere he might feel unsafe (ie. "looking for trouble" in the anti-gun, anti-ccw parlance), was like reading about a guy who hates cars, then buys one to show himself and the world how dangerous they are. He takes the drivers ed class, he gets the license, he buys the car. He has been informed what responsible and safe driving is supposed to be about, but he decides to drive recklessly on purpose so he can report on how it feels to be an aggressive driver. Then he goes to a bar, gets shitfaced, and does a little drunk driving to see what that's all about too. At the end of this spree of willfully irresponsible, idiotic and life-threatening mis-usage, he concludes...surprise!...cars are dangerous and people can do stupid things with them!
In spite of the author's claim to have gotten to "know gun culture from the inside", and the best efforts of his instructor to teach him, he failed to absorb the most crucial element that those of us who have been brought up around guns our whole lives are taught from childhood: that owning a gun is a serious responsibility, and that they need to be treated with great respect. In spite of his efforts, the fact that he does not understand this means that he hardly knows any more about "gun culture" after his experiment than he did when he started.
Given the low number of police in this era of heroin/meth crime, Murray's idiotic .22 cal ammo tax was an insult to people who are FORCED to provide their own self defense. I would think a publication that touts it's "feminist cred" would understand that a firearm in a trained hand is a woman's best chance against a much larger/stronger assailant (i.e. most men). And while the so-called "rape culture" is largely intersectionality theory gone batshit insane, if one really believed they were in constant threat of sexual assault, then legally carrying a firearm would be the only sane choice - yet most women in liberal Seattle are loath to carry any kind of weapon at all while snarking about "ammosexuals in red counties".
News flash: many of these so-called "ammosexuals" deal with many seedy types - some of whom are here illegally - in their neighborhoods or on the job, and want to get home safe to their families without ending up a statistic.
I don't know how he justified it to himself that this was a legitimate part of the normal gun culture experience, or somehow a regular thing one does with a gun, but IT IS NOT. His admitted and bizarre fixation on these devices (these tools that ordinary people keep and enjoy every day without sticking them in their mouths), and his treatment of such...haunting gun shops when he feels suicidal, considering the gun as if it emanated some magical power or special gravity, fixating on its presence wherever it was...not to mention stuffing the loaded object into his mouth and putting his finger on the trigger...these things are not a part of a normal examination of firearms, anymore than it is normal to examine a new kind of nylon rope by tying it into a hangman's noose, suspending it from a sturdy beam, and standing on a chair with it looped around your neck.
Mr. Nelson needs to get his Glock, and get in his car. First stop: the gun shop, where no doubt they will happily accept it back (especially if they have read this piece). Then, on to his therapist, where the first words out of his mouth should be "I stuck a loaded gun in my mouth." and "something is very wrong."
Defenders Prayer
Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the Lord my life to keep
If someone breaks in before i wake
I pray the Lord his life i'll take
God damn burglers
God damn rapists
God damn home invaders
AMEN
Oh, and God bless Hornady, amen.
Less importantly, he lied on all of his paperwork and, in the process, committed at least one felony. WTF.
I suppose all of that must be okay if you agree with him on gun control. I hope that he gets the help he needs and I hope that all of you not realizing how sick he is simply because you agree with his politics are fucking ashamed of yourselves. All of this is unbelievable to the point of being easily mistaken for parody. Sickening...and definitely in no way journalism.