Larry Pratt Insists It's the Gun-Free Zone That's the Problem

This discussion illustrates perfectly the difference between the gun-rights and the gun-control sides. The pro-gun folks won't budge on issues like background checks and gun availability while the gun-control side is willing to consider everything.

The opposition to universal background checks makes them really look bad.  Don't you think? Plus, the insistence that gun free zones are somehow to blame lends an element of the absurd to their position. 

What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.

Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) Says Focus on Mental Health

Taking their cue from Wayne La Pierre, gun-rights politicians often talk about the other contributing problems INSTEAD of gun availability. It almost seems like they're desperate to deflect attention from the first main problem. Rep. Blackburn mentioned the mental health situation including the over-medicating of society, but she was very clear about the first priority - protect the 2nd Amendment.

Do you think "the steam is coming out of the balloon?" Are the pro-gun factors winning by default again?

What's your opinion?  Please leave a comment.

Worst Cities for Gun Violence

Business Insider has produced some interesting charts.

click to enlarge
That must means Las Vegas is heavy on the gun suicides. I suppose that makes sense. But, what doesn't make sense is the continual citing of Chicago by the gun-rights extremists as a failure of gun control while ignoring New Orleans.

What's your opinion?  Please leave a comment.

Guns Don't Kill People, Vaginas Do

The Suicide of Meriwether Lewis

via TYWKIWDBI

Lewis got out his pistols. He loaded them and at some time during the early hours of October 11 shot himself in the head. The ball only grazed his skull.
He fell heavily to the floor. Mrs. Grinder heard him exclaim, "O Lord!"
Lewis rose, took up his other pistol, and shot himself in his breast. The ball entered and passed downward through his body, to emerge low down on his backbone.
He survived the second shot, staggered to the door of his room, and callled out, "O madam! Give me some water, and heal my wounds."
 
Lewis staggered outside, fell, crawled for some distance, raised himself by the side of a tree, then staggered back to his room. He scraped the bucket with a gourd for water, but the bucket was empty. He collapsed on his robes.
At first light, the terrified Mrs. Grinder sent her childern to fetch the servants. When they got to Lewis's room, they found him "busily engaged in cutting himself from head to foot" with his razor.
 
Lewis saw Pernier and said to him, "I have done the business my good Servant give me some water." Pernier did.
 Lewis uncovered his side and showed them the second wound. He said, "I am no coward; but I am so strong, [it is] so hard to die." He said he had tried to kill himself to deprive his enemies of the pleasure and honor of doing it.
He begged the servants to take his rifle and blow out his brains, telling them not to be afraid, for he would not hurt them, and they could have all the money in his trunk.
 
Shortly after sunrise, his great heart stopped beating.

Miss New York Speaks Her Mind

Although I oppose beauty pageants on moral grounds, this young Miss would get my vote. What about you?

Fake Jefferson Quotes

CNN

The Founding Fathers are frequently quoted in the gun control debate, but many of those quotations turn out to be fake.

The most popular comment on a recent story about gun control featured a purported quotation from Thomas Jefferson. More than 2,000 votes pushed it to the top.

"When governments fear the people, there is liberty," reads the quotation. "When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."

The same quotation has been posted dozens of times in other readers' posts. Some readers worked to debunk it by mentioning Monticello.org, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation's website, which has a section devoted to "spurious" quotations that have been attributed to the third president of the United States. The website lists several variations of the quotation, featured on two pages, and says staff "have not found any evidence that Thomas Jefferson said or wrote" those words.

Guess which side of the gun debate uses and benefits from fake quotes that are repeated and repeated?

Please leave a comment.