The Only Way to Stop a Bad Guy with a Gun....

Ok, so the last few days have seen a rash of random mass/public shootings or attempted mass shootings...As opposed to domestic killings and gang killings.

The last one happened in Oregon on Tuesday the 12th, three people (including the shooter) were ultimately shot by an angry, white, Mormon kid who loved weapons and thought Obama was coming for them. The shooter and another student is now dead.

On Sunday in Las Vegas, an angry white couple with possible white supremacist connections and other anti-government connections shot and killed 2 armed police officers then fleeing into a Walmart where the male was confronted by a civilian who was armed and had a conceal carry permit. That citizen was shot and killed by the male's wife who eventually shot herself after her husband was shot and killed by a possible combination of her guns and the ones fired by Police.

On Thursday the 5th on a college campus in Seattle, a gunman fascinated with previous school shootings and a history of mental illness a mile long and armed with a shotgun, shot 3 students, killing 1. He was subdued and apprehended by a volunteer student security guard armed with pepper spray.


On Wednesday the 4th, Canada tried to copy the US and had their own version of the angry white man with guns when a loan gunmen targeted and shot 5 police officers, killing 3 of them.

And this is older but still pretty sweet. Two conceal carry permit holders get into a road rage shooting and kill each other.


Here's what I am getting from all of this and why all the most solid arguments by the NRA are crumbling at their feet:

A. After Sandy Hook where 26 people, mostly children, were killed by legally purchased guns, Wayne LaPierre the President of the NRA, claimed that, "The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun," Well, seen in Seattle and in Las Vegas, that couldn't be further from the truth. In Seattle, the bad guy with a gun, a pump action shotgun which presumably holds anywhere from 3-5 rounds, was stopped by a good guy without a gun when the bad guy stopped to reload. And in Vegas, the "good guy with a gun" didn't have the training necessary to engage the situation and was in the end, shot by a bad guy(girl) with a gun. Since he was the only victim in Wal-Mart and the couple were merely firing shots into the ceiling, he likely would still be alive had he laid down and not confronted them and didn't have a gun.

B. The other thing the NRA will tell you is that the reason we need conceal carry and hand guns is that no one in their right mind would try to rob or harm you if they think that you are armed and that mass shooters only target "gun free" zones. Forget the fact that almost no drug corner in the inner-city is a "gun free" zone nor are anyone's homes where most domestic gun violence occurs but in both the Las Vegas incident and the Canadian incident, the perpetrators specifically targeted armed cops and got away with shooting several of them. Perhaps only one of the three were even shot by the police they attacked. So now we know that you aren't going to deter violence by being armed.

C. Along with notion that the "chance of someone being armed" will deter others from attacking them, you can add the two conceal carry Darwin Award winners to the "not true" list. This also dispels the notion that only criminals shoot each other and that only sane, rational people can pass a background check and obtain a conceal carry license and that all conceal carry permit holders are responsible individuals who won't shoot someone over texting in a theater.

D. The Seattle shooting also highlights how limiting the amount of ammunition clips and guns can carry CAN save lives. If the Seattle shooter had 30 clip AK-47, the results would have been very different.

Literally every thing the NRA has told you has been shown to not be true in one week of shootings.

What else are they lying about?

Slobby Nobby

Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon vs. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990)

"To permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself." Thus, the Court had held that religious beliefs did not excuse people from complying with laws forbidding polygamy, child labor laws, Sunday closing laws, laws requiring citizens to register for Selective Service, and laws requiring the payment of Social Security taxes."

-Justice Scalia

So, since the AHA is LAW, and Hobby Lobby isn't a church or religious organization, they cannot assert their religious doctrine above and beyond the law...They are free to practice THEIR religion but not free to impose their religion and or religious practices onto others...Just as Mormons can't practice polygamy or Native Americans can't use Peyote in their religious ceremonies.

All amendments and freedoms come with limits....Well you know, except apparently the 2nd but that's another story... But I can't yell fire in a crowded theater, slander someone in the press, practice polygamy on religious grounds, smoke pot with Rastafarians or kill my slaves...Oh wait, is that in the Constitution too??

And on another note, since corporations are people now, does this mean GM will go to jail??

Shamelss Self Promotion

Nothing real political to post now except for the obvious fact that Obama blowing up that Malaysian airline and encouraging Russia to take Crimea.

This is a music project I am involved with (it's mostly me and a drummer) and just for fun I made a video to go along with it:

Serial Killer By Enoch

It's not for everybody or the faint at heart.

Is Your Religious Liberty Being Threatened?

I had to repost this:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-emily-c-heath/how-to-determine-if-your-religious-liberty-is-being-threatened-in-10-questions_b_1845413.html

It's a really nice quiz:

1. My religious liberty is at risk because:
A) I am not allowed to go to a religious service of my own choosing.
B) Others are allowed to go to religious services of their own choosing.

2. My religious liberty is at risk because:
A) I am not allowed to marry the person I love legally, even though my religious community blesses my marriage.
B) Some states refuse to enforce my own particular religious beliefs on marriage on those two guys in line down at the courthouse.

3. My religious liberty is at risk because:
A) I am being forced to use birth control.
B) I am unable to force others to not use birth control.

4. My religious liberty is at risk because:
A) I am not allowed to pray privately.
B) I am not allowed to force others to pray the prayers of my faith publicly.

5. My religious liberty is at risk because:
A) Being a member of my faith means that I can be bullied without legal recourse.
B) I am no longer allowed to use my faith to bully gay kids with impunity.

6. My religious liberty is at risk because:
A) I am not allowed to purchase, read or possess religious books or material.
B) Others are allowed to have access books, movies and websites that I do not like.

7. My religious liberty is at risk because:
A) My religious group is not allowed equal protection under the establishment clause.
B) My religious group is not allowed to use public funds, buildings and resources as we would like, for whatever purposes we might like.

8. My religious liberty is at risk because:
A) Another religious group has been declared the official faith of my country.
B) My own religious group is not given status as the official faith of my country.

9. My religious liberty is at risk because:
A) My religious community is not allowed to build a house of worship in my community.
B) A religious community I do not like wants to build a house of worship in my community.

10. My religious liberty is at risk because:
A) I am not allowed to teach my children the creation stories of our faith at home.
B) Public school science classes are teaching science.

Scoring key:
If you answered "A" to any question, then perhaps your religious liberty is indeed at stake. You and your faith group have every right to now advocate for equal protection under the law. But just remember this one little, constitutional, concept: this means you can fight for your equality -- not your superiority.

If you answered "B" to any question, then not only is your religious liberty not at stake, but there is a strong chance that you are oppressing the religious liberties of others. This is the point where I would invite you to refer back to the tenets of your faith, especially the ones about your neighbors.

Speak American!

The above map shows the native languages and even some current languages spoken in what is now the United States of America and doesn't even include Hawaii, where Hawaian, along with English, is the official language of that state. And there is of course American territories such as Samoa, Guam and Puerto Rico and they also have other official languages other than English.

I realize that the left is probably making a bigger deal out of the reaction of some conservatives to the multilingual Coke commercial on the Super Bowl...But the reactions were real and represent a real thought of many in this country.

Here is why those who are upset have no right to get upset about a multilingual:

A. English isn't legally the official language of the United States though it is for certain states. In other words, there is no law establishing an "American language".

B. Our official motto, up until 1956 was in another language, Latin and ironically enough, it meant "Out of many, one"...So if anything, the Coke commercial was living up to that notion and those complaining are the ones who are anti-American, not Coke.

C. There are over 380 different languages spoken in the United States with 60 million people speaking a language other than English at home. So the notion that "we speak English in America" isn't really communicating the big picture.

D. Manhattan, Ohio, Miami, Santa Fe, San Francisco, Des Moines, Lafayette, Baton Rouge, Illinois, Honolulu, Alaska, Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee, Mississippi, Los Angeles, Oklahoma, etc...Are all places in the United States that derive their names from other languages. We took or bought land from Spain, France, Russia, Hawaii, Mexico and thousands of Native American tribes and shouldn't be surprised if some of those languages are still spoken in those areas.

E. Switzerland is one tenth the size of California and has 4 official languages. We'll survive a multilingual commercial.

F. I think I understood more Spanish words on that commercial than I understand "English" words on Bayou Millionaires, Swamp People or Hillbilly Hand Fish'n and ironically, I'll bet the people who watch those shows are the ones most likely to complain about the commercial. So, before we start saying English should be our official language, we need to define English.