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I’m not sure how many of my (maybe five) readers don’t follow the news on GTA IV, but last week I had the opportunity to fly to NYC for a pre-launch party with some other webmasters. I’ve been back in Virginia since Wednesday night, but just haven’t had the time and/or motivation to blog since then. While the party and the game were tons of fun, it was still nice to get back here and “cling to my guns” which couldn’t come along for the trip into victim-disarmament land.

And after checking out the other blogs, David Codrea has two pieces which made me extra happy to be home..

First up, it appears that the day after I left, Emperor Bloomberg unveiled his new “Hercules Teams” which will patrol the subways and stuff in full SWAT gear. If the idea of heavily militarized police doing daily patrols in what is supposed to be an American city doesn’t bother you enough, well, just take a look at this screen capture from the news report Mr. C. is talking about.

Yep. That’s right. Dark Helmet there is sweeping a dozen or so people with the muzzle of a select-fire M4 as he walks past. With his finger on the trigger. If that’s the kind of gun safety they see from the police in NYC, I almost understand why it’s filled with so many hoplophobes now..

Next up came this news from earlier today that race-card-poker champion Al Sharpton led a huge protest over the acquittal of the three detectives who shot the unarmed Sean Bell. While I actually agree with him that the shooting was dodgy, I don’t think my brain could have withstood being in such close proximity to the aura of cognitive dissonance which this man emits.

As I’ve said before, Sharpton has always been at the forefront of demanding slave code and Nazi-based laws which would make police the Only Ones with guns. Yet every single time these laws (predictably) backfire, he acts all surprised. Go figure.

David Kopel had a great piece in today’s Wall Street Journal about the comical attempts by Hillary and Obama to appear pro-gun.

Imagine an election race of Pat Robertson versus James Dobson, each of them appearing at organic grocery stores and Starbucks throughout Massachusetts, with each candidate insisting that he alone deserves the vote of gay-marriage advocates. An equally silly spectacle is taking place these days in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Indiana, West Virginia and Kentucky, as Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama compete for the pro-gun vote.

He totally nailed it with that comparison. And that’s just the first paragraph. By the end, he hasn’t just knocked the proverbial ball out of the park; he sent it into another timezone..

So, yea, we now know Obama thinks people in small towns in Pennsylvania are a bunch of racist, gun-nuts and religious zealots, but what do his cult members think?

Jeffery Toobin says Obama’s statement is “factually accurate” and that small town America is “lashing out” because the government won’t take care of them or something. So not only does he apparently agree that flyover country is filled with crazy hicks, he thinks of them like a bunch of petulant children having a temper tantrum as well.

Jack Cafferty follows him up by comparing small town America to “al Qaeda training camps.” So on top of being bitter, racist, Bible-thumping, gun-nuts throwing a childish hissy fit; small town people are also a bunch of terrorists? WTF?!

On second thought, that last bit isn’t really surprising given CNN’s institutionalized bias against gun owners..

Alas, the epic Obama Gun Dance continues. Only this time, he was safely tucked away at the home of some rich San Francisco fundraiser where he could speak more freely. Or, at least he could if it weren’t for the magic of the internets..

You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

So, in other words, he’s saying that people in small, Pennsylvania towns are a bunch of bitter, racist, gun nuts who are too religious. Throwing gun ownership and religion in there next to xenophobia as if they’re equally as bad somehow was a nice touch too. Was he reading from the Violence Policy Center manual on building straw men? Oh, wait, he used to be on the board of directors for the Joyce Foundation, so he probably wrote the manual.

Anyhow, after Hillary!™ called him out for being an elitist asshat, he tried to backpedal away from his statements with this:

Nobody is looking out for you. Nobody is thinking about you. And so people end up — they don’t vote on economic issues because they don’t expect anybody’s going to help them. So people end up, you know, voting on issues like guns, and are they going to have the right to bear arms. They vote on issues like gay marriage. And they take refuge in their faith and their community and their families and things they can count on. But they don’t believe they can count on Washington.

Ahhhh. I see now. He thinks they’re all just sad pandas because the mean ol’ government won’t come take care of them. And I guess he’s also implying that if they accept the Obamamessiah into their hearts, they’ll all lay down their arms and stuff and let the state protect them or something.

Since he’s apparently even more out of touch with reality than anyone imagined, I’ve got a news flash for him and his cult members:

Some of us neither asked for nor want the state to coddle us!

Now, I can’t speak for small town Pennsylvania (or anyone else), but as a city-dwelling atheist from Virginia who likes immigrants and isn’t worried about losing a job, I don’t “cling to my guns” because Washington isn’t “looking out for me” or what have you. I keep them because I do not want or need Washington to “think about me.” Especially since his definition of “help” seems to be collectivist enslavement..

Speaking of ghoulish creatures, it looks as if the Brady Bunch is planning to crash a memorial service at Virginia Tech. Even after the university spokesman (who is also anti-gun) and the student body have told them to screw off. But considering they were using the VT massacre as a fundraiser before the bodies were even cold, such ghoulish behavior is hardly surprising..

And what exactly is it they’re protesting with their aptly named “lie-in?” The so-called “gun show loophole” which A: doesn’t exist, and B: is totally irrelevant since Cho didn’t buy guns from a gun show. But who needs facts when there’s misery to exploit to push an agenda..

Why settle for the lesser evil? Vote Cthulhu in ‘08!

Paul Helmke (or whoever writes it) has a comical post post on the Brady Bunch blog about Obama’s pandering to gun owners. It seems that in their upside down world, the fact that candidates are running away from them somehow means they’re winning. Or something.

If Senator Obama is “doing the gun dance,” then he’s in step with most of the American people. A recent poll by the Washington Post indicated that while 72% felt the Second Amendment provided an “individual right,” 59% also supported gun restrictions as strong as those in the District of Columbia.

Umm, no, that doesn’t mean Obama is in step with most people. It means he’s lying. His support for banning pretty much everything is kind of the exact opposite of an individual right. And, Paul (or whoever), doesn’t that 72% there indicate that your belief that an individual right is a “fantasy” place you in a rather small minority?

As for the second number from the cited poll, that was something of a trick question. By asking who supports an extreme total ban and a ostensibly innocuous trigger lock provision, it’s hard to say who favors what. Do the people who strongly support trigger locks mildly support a total ban? Did some people who somewhat oppose a ban and support locks split the difference? Or, for that matter, did the people who claimed to like locks realize that the law never allows you to unlock it? There are plenty of people out there who think such “safety” laws are “reasonable” until you explain to them just what they do..

Either way, the compound question was a bit like asking someone if they support kicking puppies and protecting babies from cannibals. Of course some people are going to say yes to avoid looking like they don’t “think of the children” or whatever.

Support for common sense gun control should be a vote-winning issue for most candidates.

Bwahahaha! Given that the Brady Bunch’s idea of “common sense” is banning everything short of fingers, I’d say that’s a big no. Besides, if it was a “vote-winning issue,” he wouldn’t be doing the “gun dance,” now, would he?

Sebastian at Snowflakes in Hell has more on the absurd notion that gun control is a vote-winning issue in Pennsylvania.

GamePolitics has a story today about a proposed law in Arizona which would hold writers, publishers, and distributors liable for any crime committed by anyone who viewed their work. Not only would this pretty much kill free speech since there’s always some nutcase somewhere who can be inspired to kill by just about anything (think Charles Manson and Beatles songs or The Catcher in the Rye and John Hinckley or Mark David Chapman..), but it would pretty much reward criminal behavior by giving them something else to blame.

Rob a bank? Blame Heat or Dog Day Afternoon and let the victims sue Al Pacino. Shoot someone? Pfft, no worries, it’s all the military history book’s fault you knew how the gun worked. Punch someone in the face? Just say you watched a kung fu movie and let them get rich suing Chuck Norris or something.

Critically wound personal responsibly? Well, I guess we should all be able to sue the legislators who wrote this crazy bill..

Update: The Arizona Senate has rejected the bill!

Word on the street is that Barack Obama is out stumping for a national ban on carrying concealed weapons. Each of those words links to an article by someone else who said what I would have said. So instead of simply adding a “This,” let’s jump into the wayback machine and try to understand his reasoning (or lack thereof) for this..

Back on February 20, 2004, the Chicago Tribune published an article about Obama and gun control. The article is now locked away inside a subscription-only section of their site, but it was covered here and here. At any rate, when asked about taking the Illinois ban nationwide, he had this to say:

National legislation will prevent other states’ flawed concealed-weapons law from threatening the safety of Illinois residents.

Think about that for a second.

As it stands, Illinois is one of just two States which does not allow anyone other than law enforcement to carry a concealed handgun under any circumstances. They issue no permits whatsoever. And being that they do not recognize any other States’ permits, nobody from any other State is allowed to carry concealed handguns into Illinois. Full stop.

So, yea, how exactly would a national ban protect Illinois residents? Does he mean to protect them when they travel to other States? And if so, who is he protecting them from? Or, more precisely, which residents is he claiming to protect?

The only way some other States’ concealed weapons laws would be “threatening the safety of Illinois residents” is if said residents threatened death or grievous bodily harm upon someone in another State who has a concealed weapon. Otherwise, there would be no reason to shoot them. Ergo, the only Illinois residents he would be keeping safe are those who would travel to other States to commit violent crimes. I guess you could almost think of it as offering job security and industrial growth to criminals.

And I suppose it would also be much easier for his homicidal anti-gun buddies to have their way with us if we can’t defend ourselves..