Just phenomenal what the creative mind can come up with. Via.
Archive for weapons
A rocket-propelled grenade and RPG-7 launcher, via Wikipedia
See that weapon above? How’d you feel if it were completely legal to open-carry one of those suckers?
The scary part is that Justice Antonin NRA Scalia is dead (no pun) serious about what he’s saying about just that, which is why re-electing President Obama is so important. We do not want any more people like Scalia on the Supreme Court:
“Obviously the [Second] Amendment does not apply to arms that cannot be hand-carried, it’s to keep and “bear,” so it doesn’t apply to cannons, but I suppose there are hand-held rocket launchers that can bring down airplanes, that will have to be decided.”
So anything one can carry around is dandy with him. Got it. He’s good with legally schlepping weapons that can are used against tanks and planes and stuff. How measured of him.
And imagine a rocket launcher in the hands of someone like the Colorado murderer… in a movie theater. Or a mall. Bye bye Macy’s.
And somehow I don’t think we’d need to rely on one of those explosive-projectile-type things to protect ourselves from burglars. Call it a hunch.
To those out there who are big on “Second Amendment Remedies,” there’s this to consider: If the big bad government were really coming after us and our sidearms, hey, they have drones and bombs and the military on their side. I have a funny feeling they’d still win.
Because the rockets fired from RPGs are not guided, accuracy can be a problem. Rockets from RPGs achieve the best results when fired at close range. This often requires people using an RPG to put themselves in the line of fire to score an accurate hit.
There is no conceivable way to apply the Founding Fathers’ understanding of a ”well-regulated militia” armed with slow-to-load, hard-to-aim muskets to today’s weapon technology.
And there’s that.
Note: Headline edited.
Today’s L.A. Times letter to the editor, because our voice matters:
Must war always be the way?
Re “Military seeks lethal arms in a tiny package,” May 31
What I find most unsettling was the statement that “the Pentagon is looking to cheaper, smaller weapons to wage war in the 21st century,” as if this is the new paradigm for our future.
I know that it is naive to imagine that our world will someday be free of conflict, but to make active preparations for a future life that will be engulfed in a paroxysm of constant violence is a terrible M.O. for our country.
John Boehner, the new Weeper of the House, handed out tobacco industry bribes on the House floor. He’s in a leadership position and today, insisted on wielding an oversized wooden gavel.
Darrell Issa, the splendid new head of the House Oversight Committee, as he likes to boast in tweet after annoying tweet, has a few proud moments or three in his past, too:
Rep. Darrell Issa, within months of leaving Army service in the early 1970s, was arrested twice on illegal-weapons charges, including an incident in Michigan that led to a misdemeanor gun conviction, The Chronicle has learned.
Yes, many of us knew about this, but now that he’s the Big Stick Figure on Campus, let’s explore and review:
[Gun control groups] showed a video in which Issa’s campaign for U.S. Senate in 1998 operated a booth at a Los Angeles County gun show, where high-powered weapons and Nazi memorabilia were being sold. … Issa was twice arrested in 1972 on weapons charges – once in Ohio, once in Michigan.
Want more details? You know that you do:
Court records on file in Issa’s hometown of Cleveland Heights, Ohio, show that in March 1972, one month after getting out of the Army, Issa was arrested on charges of carrying a concealed weapon and auto theft. [...]
In May 1972, a grand jury indicted Issa on a larceny charge in connection with the car theft but dropped the weapons charge. Two weeks later, a prosecutor dropped the car theft charge as well.
Months later, when Issa was attending college in Michigan, he was fined $100 and put on three months’ probation after being arrested for possession of an unregistered handgun, Michigan court records show. [...]
On Dec. 18, Issa pleaded either guilty or no contest to the charge, the records indicate. A magistrate fined him and put him on probation. He also was ordered to pay $107 in court costs, the records show.
That concludes our little walk down Memory Lane. Don’tcha just love the Family Values party? Aren’t they the wholesomest?
Issa should have used a little of that “tough oversight” instinct on himself.
H/t: JamieHarbor
By GottaLaff
I’ll provide details when I find them. For now:
Today is officially Bust the Bad Guys Day.
My Blackwater for Dummeez primer here.
Federal prosecutors indicted Gary Jackson, who was president of Blackwater until last year, on Friday in a case that stemmed from a raid on Blackwater’s North Carolina headquarters in 2008, which turned up 22 automatic weapons, including 17 Russian-made AK-47s.
Along with Jackson, the other Blackwater officials charged include the company’s former lawyer, Andrew Howell, former vice president Bill Matthews and two employees tasked with overseeing Blackwater’s armory and documentation having to so with its status as an arms dealer.
And yet the State Department still employs them. It’s about time they Xe the light.
Here’s an older post from 2008 about a few AK-47s that showed up in their armory.
By GottaLaff
You may be acquainted with 42bkdodgr, my “72-year-old friend” who contributes Special Comments to TPC from time to time.
He sent me this message yesterday, and I had to share:
Yesterday at a Mens Club luncheon I attended as a guest, there was a law enforcement officer running for top law enforcement position in Vegas.
He told the group that he favored no gun registration requirement and that people should buy as many guns and ammo as they could afford, because the way the country was going, they made need them.
I was shocked and scared from what was said. This coming from a law enforcement official.
I’m scared, too, 42bkdodgr, although I am becoming less shocked, which is a commentary on the recent state of affairs in and of itself.
But I’m not just alarmed by that one story. That was bad enough. No, it gets worse. Today, when I opened my L.A. Times, I found this:
One judge’s solution for citizens feeling less secure because of budget cuts in an Ohio county: Carry a gun.
He explained that anyone with a gun should be “law abiding”.
Yes, I’m sure all those angry, extremist militia types and/or Tea Baggers, and/or anyone with a grudge against the government who is being egged on by the likes of Sarah Palin to “reload” will remember to be “law abiding”.
Emotion has nothing to do with it.
Rage is so easily controlled, isn’t it? Especially these days. Why, sure as shootin’, these people are as trustworthy and reasonable and safety conscious as they can be with their lethal weapons.
Mackey [...] was expressing concerns with budget cuts that have trimmed the sheriff’s department from 112 to 49 deputies in the county, which is Ohio’s largest by land area.Asked by WKYC how people should respond to the cuts and limited patrols, he said, “Arm themselves. Be very careful and just be vigilant because we’re going to have to look after each other.”
Feel safer now? That awesome posse mentality is so in vogue these days. I must remember to purchase Nordstrom’s finest hottt studded leather holster to match the gleam of ready-aim-fire in my eyes.
Even if the judge did not intend to encourage vigilantism, IMHO he was being irresponsible. Guns are not the answer to budget cuts. His honor might have thought about the possible consequences of his words before he opened his influential judicial mouth.
By GottaLaff
BushCo’s fraudulent little war takes yet another turn for the worse:
Birth defects in the Iraqi city of Fallujah have soared in recent years, with doctors saying advanced US weaponry such as white phosphorous and depleted uranium shells may have caused a “massive, unprecedented number” of congenital health problems.
A BBC investigative report has found that the incidence of birth defects in Fallujah has reached a rate 13 times higher than that found in Europe. One doctor at a US-built hospital in the city says the number of birth defects has spiked from one or two per month prior to the Iraq war to two or three per day today. [...]
[BBC world affairs editor John] Simpson says the Fallujah doctors who raised the alarm about birth defects were “well aware that what they said went against the government version, and we were told privately that the Iraqi authorities are anxious not to embarrass the Americans over the issue.” [...]
Simpson further reported that he had “heard many times” that women in Fallujah were being warned not to have children.
If this is true, and I believe it is, it’s inexcusable. There was controversy over the weaponry at the time. Now we see the horrific consequences of actions taken in our name.
I (among many others) don’t recall giving my approval, but Boy Georgie and his trainer Dickless McHeartStent were just a tad headstrong and didn’t care. About anything. Except their own little power trip.
As for embarrassing Americans, BushCo managed to do that all on their own.
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