Don't have plans next Saturday? Well now you do, because January 19 is officially the first annual "Gun Appreciation Day". Survivalists and serial killers and whoever else owns guns are encouraged to "go to your local gun store, gun range or gun show" and appreciate your gun the best way you know how.
This video, given the culture of fear-approved title "RUN HIDE FIGHT," has just been released by Alabama's Department of Homeland Security. It instructs Alabamans on what to do in the event of a mass shooting, but also scares the shit out of everyone who watches it.
Here's a general idea of how many weapons are just floating around this country right now. The LAPD held a gun buyback in Los Angeles on Wednesday (the image above is from a buyback in Bridgeport, Conn. last week) and they received the following: 901 handguns, 698 rifles and 363 shotguns. Oh, they also were handed two rocket launchers. No big deal. And these were just the people willing to turn over their guns in exchange for $100 gift cards (for handguns and long guns) or $200 gift cards (for rifles). In one city. Here's a photo of one of the rocket launchers:
"6,600 Americans have currently signed the petition to deport me - meaning 311,993,400 clearly want me to stay," CNN personality Piers Morgan tweeted on Saturday in response to a We the People petition launched on Friday by pro-gun advocates who seek to ship Morgan back across the pond over his outspoken views in favor of more gun control in the aftermath of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Here's a picture of Cory Booker reacting to Peggy Noonan on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos. This was his expression when he heard her say that video games were to blame for gun violence in America. It's the same look that TV viewers at home have been giving to Peggy Noonan for years. Major props to Cory Booker for putting it out there on national TV.
During NRA spokesman Wayne LaPierre's Friday-morning press conference, the organization's first since 27 people died a week ago at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Conn., my Twitter feed — filled with liberal writers and pundits — was lighting up in fascination and disgust. "Every journalist on Twitter thinks Lapierre is completely insane," Reuters' Felix Salmon wrote. The consensus was that LaPierre's remarks were unhinged and alienating; the Washington Post's Ezra Klein marveled at "how much damage LaPierre is doing to the NRA without even allowing questions." Even the few conservatives I follow agreed: "I'm not sure this presser was good in style a week after Newtown," wrote RedState's Erick Erickson.
One way in which to keep guns out of the hands of people that shouldn't have them is to make sure that gun stores stop thieves, especially ones that brazenly walk into a store, take a gun off the rack and walk out. Or, at the very least — like, the absolute least there's ever been — gun stores should realize that a gun has been stolen in the first place. A gun store in East Windsor, Conn. failed miserably at both of these tasks earlier this week, and consequently was raided by the feds tonight. Oh, in a poetic coincidence, the store sold one of the guns used in the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting.
At about noon Wednesday, five days after the tragedy in Newtown, Conn., President Obama addressed the nation, announcing the creation of a task force to strengthen gun control laws in America.
Gun store owners across the country are reporting record sales in the aftermath of last week's massacre at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
Ron Cohen is the CEO of Sig Sauer, the company that produced one of the guns that was used in Friday's Sandy Hook Elementary school massacre. You have probably never heard of Ron Cohen before. I know I never have. I tried to find a decent picture of him this weekend, but I came up empty. He may as well not exist.
One major way in which conservatives have been successful in changing policy in America over the last decade or so is by changing the way in which we talk about issues in the first place. The most obvious example is global warming, which slowly morphed into the much more cuddly "climate change" early in the Bush administration. Well, according to New York Times stat guru Nate Silver, one area where conservatives have been very successful in corrupting public conversation is gun control, where they've slowly shifted our vocabulary since the Clinton administration.
Well, you knew this one was coming. Do you think that the root of today's massacre in Newtown, Conn. is that there are too many guns available too easily in a country that worships gun ownership and glorifies gun violence? Well, there's a buuuuuuuuuunch of people who think that the root of today's massacre is that not enough guns are available easily enough to a country that doesn't value "bearing arms" as much as it should. One of them is Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America, who tossed out this old bullshit today:
Probably the most widely viewed Twitter trending topic in the United States right now is "#prayfornewton." The ad hoc hashtag is indicative of both the public's desire to show support for the victims in today's Connecticut school shooting—most of whom were children— but also our ignorance of what exactly happened at Sandy Hook Elementary: the shooting was in Newtown, not "Newton."
