Sunday, November 13, 2016

Cracked: Why the NRA is bad for gun owners.

So Cracked has a new video up.

And it seems a bit... familiar.


You can tell their argument is... problematic when the main pillars of their argument are
1)  The 2nd Amendment is totally about militias and the NRA is crazy for lobbying otherwise.

2) Nobody wants to ban guns.  Which is... interesting given laws President Obama lobbied congress to pass, and the similar laws Hillary wanted enacted.


Now 1 is.... hilarious.  Since the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that yes, the 2nd amendment is about an individual right in Heller.  Where they split 5-4 was, given the 2nd being an individual right, is a handgun ban against said amendment?

So, going the 2nd is about Militias is against the SCOTUS rulings.... in addition to basic logic.  If the 2nd said that militias could not be infringed... what does that /mean/?   That a bunch of guys can make and armed cadre and the government can't infringe on it?   That a state can make an army and  the feds can't say no?

Of course 2 is based on the argument of  "Hey as long as the government doesn't do door to door confiscation of every gun the NRA should shut up."


At least it's not as bad as the earlier Cracked article mentioned here.

Do note that that article 5 Reasons even Gun Owners should hate the NRA  is written by the same guy who earlier,  wrote about how awesome gun ban are  and thinks that the NRA is bad for gun owners...  because they oppose gun bans.


So...  yeah Cracked goes this "nobody wants to ban your guns"  in one video, where they have several articles, about how great gun bans would be.

Including one video about how great Australasia's....  mass confiscation was.

It's kinda hard to buy the whole "The NRA is paranoid for thinking people want to ban guns" from a publication that has recently demanded gun bans.

Friday, September 16, 2016

This time Cracked decides to *talk* to Gun shop workers.

Ah yes.  Cracked did the *brave* thing and decided to see what people who work at gun shops have to say about guns.


Seriosuly that's the tone they take

Of course, after every shooting, we have another national discussion on guns that goes nowhere. Perhaps because we're all partisan jerks who'd rather people keep dying than admit those other partisan jerks might be a little bit right. Taking a tiny baby step toward understanding, we figured we'd start at the source: We spoke to two former gun-sellers. We spoke to two former gun-sellers, Jerome in California and Jacob in Texas, to get a better handle on the American gun trade.


California you say?

And then they immediately go into #4. Paranoia Sells Guns.

People buy guns for all sorts of reasons -- sports, protection, vengeance -- but at Jerome's store, nothing sold like paranoia.

Wait... the guy in California found that people buy guns out of fear of them being banned?
That's... not paranoid.


Yes, the price spikes are frustrating and can get silly.  (As the article mentions). But given that after these mass shootings politicians do demand guns for certain guns...  And sometimes get their guns. Again that's not paranoia.


And then they go into how you get crazies at the gun shop.  Yup.  Nothing much to say there.

Interestingly,  2 admits that yeah... an FFL can deny a sale if they want.


And then #1 gets on the "it's too easy to buy guns whine"


If you want a gun, all you have to do is show up with a pulse and not get a visible erection when the clerk talks about stopping power. "It's ridiculously easy to buy a gun under federal law," Jacob says. "The shortlist of things that allow you to buy a gun are: Be the actual buyer of the gun, so no wives buying guns for husbands, etc. Be a citizen or a resident alien. Be of sound mind. Don't be on drugs. Don't be a felon. Don't have any record of domestic violence. That's about 90 percent of people who haven't been to jail."

Wait.... you mean the vast majority of citizens can buy a gun after proving that they're not crazy, abusive or criminal?   Gee, it's almost like it's a right.  Oh wait, for a right you don't have to beg for prior permission.

And naturally the article goes on about Default Proceeds and blathers about how great Private Sale bans are.  What's fascinating is the article utterly ignores that 1) many, many states *have* banned private sales.  and 2)  most mass killers don't bother with private sales anyway.


Still, the tone is interesting as it continues a fatalism towards gun control we'd seen in Cracked recently.  And an attempt on their part to at least understand the issue better.

And just a bit of amusement, earlier this week cracked had a bit about "Massive Catastrophes"
Which had for #5: Arson Attacks Tend To Be Much Worse Than Mass Shootings

Do tell Cracked.  Do tell.

Thursday, September 8, 2016

Cracked takes... Gun Control advocates to task.

So cracked has another article about gun control.

Now Cracked has a funny thing where the url gives a different title
http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-5-dumbest-things-we-do-in-name-gun-control

Huh....   well that's telling.

Let's go over their list
#5. We Worry Most About Guns Criminals Use The Least
 #4. We Barely Even Mention Suicide
 #3. We Pretend Background Checks Will Fix Everything
 #2. We Don't Think About Logistics
 #1. We Forget What Country We're In

So mentioning a myopic focus on "scary looking guns", lumping in suicides to goose crime stats, acting as if background checks would be a magic cure-all,  ignoring the thorny issues of enforcement,  and the nature of the US.


Oh and then there's this

Basically, no one at any level of our current gun crisis is going to part with their weapons as freely as Australians did. Gun violence of all sorts was already on the decline in that country when the stricter laws were put in place. Whether the stricter gun laws even had an impact on homicide rates still seems like a question that hasn't quite been answered yet

That's right, they can't even claim that Australia's mass confiscation actually reduced homicide rates.

So the answer to "Why we can't Australia away the gun problem" is...  the Australia solution still had millions of guns out in circulation,  requires a much more pliant populace, and might not have even reduced homicides.

Hence another reason why gun owners resist.

And amazingly... the article ends on crime reduction plans that aren't gun control.

Though just to show that they're cracked they still spitball about some touchy feely gun control

Maybe we could toss a few mandatory safety features onto the guns we sell going forward to make them safer to keep around the house, thus (ideally) reducing the number of accidental gun deaths each year as well.

Just keep in ind #2 applies to safety features as well.

Obviously, even if we did all of those things it wouldn't fix the problem completely. That said, any one of those things would make more sense than our current strategy of making guns an all-or-nothing proposition where we either have to ban them entirely or freely carry them around in public without restrictions of any sort.

Oh bless your heart.

But this does show the last refuge of the gun control advocate.  They go "Oh I don't want to ban all guns!  Let's compromise!"


We're never going to go for either one of those options, so we have to find some kind of middle ground at some point. Shifting our focus away from ridding the country of guns completely and more toward combating the reasons why we point them at each other (and ourselves) so often might be the way to do it.


Told you.   Still, grading on a curve this is a big jump on Cracke's part.

Oh and for the compromise bit...  you think the writers will oppose any new Assault Weapons Bans?  Like say the one percolating in Washington State?

Or would they agree to a "compromise" legislation that has mental health reforms & safe storage liability in exchange for overturning AWBs?


Sunday, August 14, 2016

Cracked also admits that a full on gun ban in the US would be futile and counterproductive

Not just that but... as  such draconian measures would start of a civil war and even if there was not popular resistance and a voilent, militarized state reaction,  prohibition has failed in the US and there's already means for illicit gun smuggling and distribution.

Here's their article on the negative consequences of banning guns


It's also interesting that the "no getting rid of all guns would case problems" is among a list of literal Utopian goals of "What if there were no diseases or no starving people", and the article itself is more an exercise of "Look in order to get X there may be negative consequences to it".

A closer analogy would be if you went "Let's assume all guns magically went poof, would people still be violent?"

Though the comments... not that I recommend reading the comments... seem to run in the style of "Pointing out negative consequences is Privileged!" (Seriously).   And specifically to gun control you have folks suddenly turning all gung-ho Drug warrior to justify how gun bans would be okay.

Instead of, you know, going "There may be negative consequences to the goal we want, which means we have to be careful about executing the goals we want."

Tuesday, August 2, 2016

A... good article about Mass Killers fom Cracked.

This was surprising....



One the one hand the article repeatedly calls a semi-auto pistol and an AR-style gun (even when it's not an AR) the "standard mass shooter gear."  And it notes how common Glock handguns are... in these killings... but that's like saying drunk drivers prefer Ford F150's and Honda civics.

A common gun would tend to be...  common


On the other hand the article admits time and time again, that these killings have been done without "assault weapons" (or even guns),  that the background check laws in the above examples wouldn't have done anything because the killers had clean backgrounds, and makes a point that unless you want to  "ban[] all guns and magically mak[e] the existing 300 million of them vanish" that the laws wouldn't do anything.

The Article has #2 as the Nice massacre, and points out that all the killing was done with a truck, and then mentions at the end the dozens stabbed to death in a mass killing in Japan.


And then there's this:

OK, I have to pause to address everyone who's been shouting, "assault weapons ban!" at their screen for the last 4,000 words. After all, should that crazy fucker have been able to buy these?
But remember, all we're talking about with an assault weapons ban is a limit on how many bullets they hold at a time before you have to reload. Would this particular shooting have turned out differently if he'd only been able to fire, say, ten shots before swapping magazines? Remember, he had combat training -- with practice, swapping magazines can be done in a couple of seconds.

And an AWB doesn't even cover *that*.  What he's talking about is a magazine ban.
An AWB bans guns if they have a certain number of cosmetic features.


Tuesday, July 12, 2016

Cracked: Nobody wants to ban guns, but look at how awesome a country with no guns is!

Cracked has an article about UK policing.

Which goes about as well as you think.


Amusing that #2 is a "Oh sure we have thousands of armed cops in London, but there's no armed cops!"

And a lot of the article is ignoring how rare US police use their weapons.

Or that people in the UK can own some guns.  But hey, handguns are banned.

Also...... in the comments.

Here's a hint.  If the article is about a "kinder, gentler and deescalating" form of policing when someone asks "well how would they ban guns in the US?"  maybe you shouldn't go "They'll send the Army after gun owners."

Saturday, July 2, 2016

Cracked: Homemade weapons are Awesome, but scary, ban guns!

That's pretty much the tone of this article. I'm not sure what's more amusing.

That even in an article about cool (if dubious) homemade weapons Cracked can't get in a swipe at US gun laws.


Americans already have almost stupidly easy access to the best and most effective supervillain weapons of all time -- guns. But we're not talking about the cute little guns you might use to shoot up tin cans or kill a celebrity lion. We're talking about guns that blow a hole in time and space.


Or that the only guns in the article. Are.... black powder guns, homemade black powder canons... and.... shotguns.

Yes. Despite having a picture of a guy holding a mini-gun there's not a single self-loading firearm in this list.

And the only cartridge weapon are ones that even people int he UK and Japan can own.


Oh I know! Almost all of hte weapons on this list (except for the shogtuns) are ones people can (and did) build AT HOME. Which was the whole point of the article.




So.... think Craked will keep this in mind next time they demand more gun control?

Thursday, June 9, 2016

It's not surprising that Cracked did an anti-Reagan article...

But it is surprising that they decided the number one bad thing he did was....

Mental Health Deinstitutionalization.

Seriously go check the list.

Huh... remember when it was progressive to fight against the horrors of the Insane Asylum system?
And all good liberals (and not just liberals) railed against the idea of warehousing the mentally ill in prisons-in-all-but-name?

Huh.

But there's a real bonus too. See it wouldn't be Cracked if they didn't take a swipe at gun owners.

So the next time a rabid firearms enthusiast says that improving mental health treatment is the answer to controlling gun violence in this country, tell them that they're probably right, and then remind them how much of a shame it is that their favorite president didn't see it the same way.
Uh...   Reagan *did* sign gun control as governor of California and as president he wasn't exactly firearms friendly  (Just as a gun enthusiast about the Hughes Amendment)

Still... aside from that,  Cracked is admitting that "improving mental health treatment is the answer to controlling gun violence in this country"  as opposed to the gun bans (including Australian-style mass confiscation) that Cracked advocates.

Huh.  Funny that.

And as a bonus.   Somehow Reagan's neutering of public sector union's abilities to to strike....  destroyed the power (and size) of private sector unions.

Once the president says it's cool, though, all bets are off. Private employers absolutely took this as a sign that they were free to use replacement workers in the event of a strike.

Ah,  so before Reagan came around companies would never have thought of simply "hiring scabs".  I guess all those Guilded age robber barons were morons for hiring Pinkertons to beat strikers

Tuesday, May 3, 2016

A warning on handloads.

Bayou Renaissance Man has a cautionary tale on why reloading (while rewarding) has to be done with care.

He's also got another story that starts off like this:
Reloading is fun, interesting, and a lot cheaper than buying factory ammunition . . . but it has its dangers.  They can involve powder, like the tale above;  or they can involve carelessness in other ways.  My favorite is a friend of mine in South Africa who smoked a pipe. 
I won't spoil how that story goes.

So go and give a read.

And I can't talk about the risks of handloads without mentioning my own mistake.
I will note that it's been many years and so far I have not had another incident, let alone a repeat.

Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Cracked on how corrupt and overly powerful the police are

So last week Cracked Ran an article on how powerful police interrogations can be.
(But doesn't talk about why that's a real good idea to lawyer up once you've stated the minimum the situation deems appropriate. )

And today they did a piece about how abusive, racist and crazy US Police departments can be.

Keep these articles in mind the next time Cracked has an article going on about how "there ought to be a law!".




Cracked On Sandy Hook Truthers.


This is a heartfelt article on a parent's loss and the nature of how conspiracy theories work.

Not much to criticize about that.

But...  reading it one notices that the article repeatedly says "gun control never happened".

It's their blithe attempt to debunk a pillar of the "Truther" movement that is "The government orchestrated X tragedy in order to exploit it."

Here's the problem with saying "gun control never happened". Post Sandy Hook New York,  Connecticut, Maryland, Colorado and other states *did* pass stricter gun control in response to the killings.

And the President himself lobbied congress heavily to pass bills that would ban certain guns.

This is like saying "Bush didn't cause 9/11 because the Patriot act never passed"  or "We never invaded Iraq."

Obviously, the Sandy Hook Truthers are nuts, but saying they're wrong because "gun control didn't happen" is factually incorrect.

And then there's this...

 Some of these interviews didn't sit right with the conspiracy-minded, especially those who feared that the tragedy would be used as a pretext for gun control.

Well... yes  wasn't the tragedy used by Gun Control advocates as a reason to pass laws they thought would make things safer?  They were pretty open about using it as a pretext for gun control.


Here we see the article being very sloppy with terminology.  Basically, they're saying that because guns weren't fully banned, that there was "no gun control".


Heck don' gun control advocates go on and on about "gun control" is not "gun confiscation"? And that "nobody wants your guns"?

But here we have an article that deliberately equates gun control with mass confiscation.



What's funny is only a minor edit could have removed this bit from the article.

Just replace "gun control" with "mass confiscation" and the point would stand.



Tuesday, April 12, 2016

SO Cracked takes on Fast and Furious

So Cracked decided to wade into the whole ATF trafficking in guns to Cartels.

Why yes, they do blame all the Mexican gun violence on American gun laws.


And yes they do fear-monger on 50 bmg rifles.  Despite sheepishly admitting....

The Barrett is a rifle with almost no practical criminal uses. It weighs around 30 pounds and costs as much as a damn car. 

Oh but don't worry, they manage to blame you American gun owners.

The reason the cartels had use for the Barrett is chilling: When you're as large as, say, Los Zetas, your "turf wars" involve the Mexican army. A gun that can shoot through tanks is pretty useful for that. And, lucky for them, America had a surplus of Barretts, because "fuck yeah."

Note that these obviously illegal transactions are being done on the order of the ATF.
But it's us who get blamed.

This made for an interesting customer service dilemma: How do you deal with a customer you know is:

1. Actively providing firearms to one of the most dangerous organizations in the world and ... 2. Being monitored by the ATF, so ... 3. They're probably gonna go to super-prison for that.

Oh bless your heart.  You thought people would go to jail...

Oh wait... the next part admits that nope... the ATF botched even watching the straw purchasers.  And didn't have enough to get em.

Good job!


And note this bit of blame...

If our source's store had just followed their guts and refused to sell to the most obviously sketchy buyers, the world would've been a little bit safer. Instead, the ATF lost 1,400 (or more!) weapons to Mexico. Two of those weapons were tracked to the murder of a U.S. Border Patrol agent:

Recall that the store actually alerted the ATF.  And told them about this... and the ATF told them to continue the sales.  And it's... somehow the fault of the gun-store.

Meanwhile the worst Cracked has for the ATF is calling them "kooky".  Even through they admit that at least 150 people have been hurt or killed by those exact weapons.

And the article ends with a "junk on the bunk" picture to show how scary tat 50bmg is...  while not mentioning the RPG right next to it.


And in dog that didn't bark fashion... Cracked doesn't mention that no one at the ATF faced consequences for these actions.   Nor that the President was using carnage in Mexico to demand gun control....

Though the Cracked article itself did implicitly demand gun control.

Well, at least Cracked has admitted that the ATF did gunrunning.  Baby steps.

Thursday, March 17, 2016

Cracked Thinks Any Pro Gun Response is Awful.

Well....  Some Gun Control...
Well 20% of their list.

Here's their 5 Awful Public Reactions You See After Every Tragedy

In short

#5  The Hero: How dare someone suggest that someone armed might be able to stop a mass shooting.

#4 The Topper: This one's reasonable as it's about people who try to one-up the outrage.

#3 The Problem Solver:  Simplistic problems are laughable. Now they actually make a token swipe at the "Let's make bullets cost $1000!", but the rest is mocking the idea of armed self defense.

Then we get to the two fun ones.

#2 Don't you dare Politicize this to fit your agenda!

#1 How dare you tell someone to not to Politicize this to fit their agenda!

But here's their attempt to excuse the inconsistency:

The exception to the Agenda-Seizer, as those of you taking notes should know, is the person who wants to talk about a relevant issue. ... Or, to pick another completely random example, if there's a mass shooting, then it's actually pretty goddamn reasonable to talk about guns. 


Except Cracked thinks it's unreasonable to talk about pro-gun issues after a tragedy.  And that it's unreasonable to point out that the laws being pushed, such as Universal Background Checks... aren't even applicable to the situation.

This also goes into the whole point that  it's Gun Control Advocates who demand no one dare disagree with them, and then act as if there's no such thing as a debate over gun issues.


Also take note.  In an article that's really all about how Mass Shootings should be politicized to push gun control,  the only specific gun control proposal they mention is the token one they mock.  Interesting tone shift from a publication that only recently was pushing for the Australian style confiscation and bans.

But that shows that the actual  gun law is secondary.  It's more the emotional response of "Something Must be done."


Aside from mocking Cracked, this article does make something to think on.  While it's not an example of an Ideological Turing Test the article does show an utter inconsistency in thinking




Sunday, March 13, 2016

The high status of lethal weapons?




Watch to the conclusion to see why swords are high status.
Specifically why being able to carry around a sword day to day was high status...
And for a modern version, consider how May Issue restricts carry to the wealthy & connected and their retainers.

Conversely that means Shall Issue (let alone Constitutional or permitless carry) is extremely egalitarian. And thus makes carry law a very useful litmus test for how much a person really is committed to the idea of equal rights.

Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Cracked *almmmoooost* endorses the Judicious use of Force and Self Defense

So in an article talking about


So Cracked has an article about how Deadpool was Exactly as violent as it needed to be.

Okay... and they talk about how violence is part of art and narrative conflict and is entertaining.

Quite right.

And then the article goes beyond its use in fiction and into real world violence, and then about how there's good and bad violence...

We're told so very often growing up that violence is never the answer. But what about when it is? 
Oh... so maybe they'll tall about self defense?

Adam Brown steps into the ring against Ronda Rousey and spectators have paid $20 a head to watch this debacle and the winner gets a free dinner and a Fitbit, what is it we've come to see? We're all waiting for the show. If neither party fights, then we didn't get what we came for and everyone is disappointed. Violence was the answer, in this case. In pro boxing, in MMA, in the WWE, violence is the answer.


Nope!

And later on...

Much like alcohol and drugs can be abused, a car can be used as a weapon, and you can use fire to cook a tasty burger or burn down an orphanage, violence in general can be abused. To lump it all together under one banner as bad, or subhuman, or crass and bestial, does a disservice to humanity and insults us all.

The funny part... is that they're talking about bloodsports ( yes the article itself uses that term).
So violence is okay if it's for entertainment....

Heck note the article has "weapon" as a universal negative on the car example.

But points to Cracked for at least pointing out about consent and that just because someone else abuses X doesn't mean that X should be banned.


Huh...   odd that only a couple weeks ago they were going on about how violent movies are to blame for mass shootings...

Monday, February 15, 2016

And here we see Cracked's own minds... crack.

So Cracked did a list on "horrifying valentines day promotions".  And you can guess one of 'em was about guns.

(To be fair,  not all of my posts about Cracked are when they go into gun control.  Increasingly they've started being scolds about movies being too violent and bongs being too easy to buy)

On talking about Vegas wedding options that have range time,  with some high priced rentals before the ceremony....

Now, we're not saying that's a bad thing. In fact, a large portion of us here at Cracked would jump at the chance to spend the day screaming "GET SOME" while firing off hundreds of AK-47 rounds with our significant others. The problem is that these offers came a mere two months after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. Or as Wikipedia puts it, "the second-deadliest mass shooting by a single person in U.S. History." The one that resparked heated gun debates and forced ads, TV shows, movies, and video games to remove gun-related material.
Well that's the thing Cracked you have said that that's a bad thing.  Because you've put up some very stridently anti gun writers and let them be your go to guys for writing on gun control.

Oh and thanks for linking that the main objections to these events are similar in nature to people wanting to censor TV, movies, and video games.

Obviously this shows how crazy...

Wait no...   Cracked didn't you recently, publish an article blaming Hollywood movies for how they decrepit guns?

Why yes you did!


And about the gun control gun rights thing...

We're not here to take a stance on that debate (that's a whole library's worth of articles full of opposing viewpoints), but we can certainly understand why some people would cringe after hearing about the promotion to empty a machine gun clip into pictures of their ex.

We?  Now this article was written by two people    so presumably this is their opinion and the we is not an "editorial" we.

Still isn't it funny how Cracked has taken to distancing themselves from the "gun control" side, at least overtly?






Bad Science

http://www.realclearscience.com/journal_club/2016/02/02/study_of_171_countries_finds_link_between_public_mass_shootings_and_gun_ownership_109526.html
The United States now has more guns than people, according to estimates published last year in the Washington Post. But even before that disconcerting nugget of information entered the public realm, the U.S. still housed a rather obscene amount of firearms

Disconcerting?  Obscene?

Yeah...  it seems like you want to ban guns.


"Here's what we do know. After peaking in the 1980s and early 1990s, crime has plummeted in the United States. The rates of forcible rape, murder, violent crime, property crime, and aggravated assault are currently as low as they were in the 1960s."

So.... more guns don't cause more crime?  Any expanding on how that undercuts the core reasoning behind gun control?   None?

Ah, gonna focus on the mass shootings?  Right.

Lankford then explored how the number of mass shootings per country were associated with each country's homicide rate, suicide rate (used a rough proxy for mental health), and firearm ownership rate. While he found no link between the number of shootings and suicide or homicide rates, he found a highly significant (p<.01) link between the number of shootings and firearm ownership rates. 
Apparently, yes,  there's no link on homicide and gun rate but there is on the subset of homicides.

Oh-kay.  No pondering why that's happening?


Lankford noted a number of limitations to his study. Older incidents occurring further in the past and in countries without streamlined reporting systems may have been missed. Moreover, since public mass shootings are rare, the sample size is small for the forty-six-year study period.

So, a small sample size,  combined with bad reporting.    You know,  when you have a correlation that seems anomalous and is in part due to a small sample size,  there might be something off with that correlation.


But why let that get in the way when there's obsecene and disconcerting guns to ban!


Lankford also made clear that he utilized the definition of public mass shooting from the NYPD's report. The attacks "must have (a) involved a firearm, (b) appeared to have struck random strangers or bystanders and not only specific targets, and (c) not occurred solely in domestic settings or have been primarily gang-related, drive-by shootings, hostage-taking incidents, or robberies."

Which means despite the breathless writing earlier in the article San Bernadino wouldn't count.


He did however, state the natural conclusion from his findings.
"Perhaps the most obvious step the United States could take to reduce public mass shootings may also be the most politically challenging: reduce firearms availability."
Lankford noted that the approach seemed to work in Australia. After a public mass shooting in 1996 that left thirty-five people dead, the country's government passed comprehensive gun control legislation. 

Wait... so overall gun deaths's aren't correlated... but the natural conclusion is gun control?
Color me surprised.

But nobody wants to ban guns.  Do note they don't even say that Australia had mass bans and confiscations.

I also wonder which other rights and possessions these folks think should be banned because a correlation was found.  Is that how science works now?

"Hey we found a correlation between autism and visits to the doctor!  Let's   ban doctors!"

Sunday, February 14, 2016

Occupy Democrats: The difference a year makes

Remember when Occupy Dems wanted lese majesty to be treason?

Well here's their meme:



And a year later....

Now they say that going against the president is the American way.



Seriously.

Oh and as a bonus....  this posted yesterday morning before it hit the airwaves that Justice Scalia had passed on.

Still think Occupy Dems would maintain that wishing the president's attempt to appoint a new SCOTUS judge would "fail is the American way"?


Wow... that didn't take long.




Unprecedented?  Uh...  no....
Here's a bit of historical information that shows... that yeah there's president. 

Also note that the logic that not voting in the way the President wants is a rejection of the constitution and democratic values.   Well again... see the first meme they put up.

Cracked... now complaining about violence in movies.

So it looks like the antis are *finally* admitting that gun violence is down in the US.

What do to?

Why scream about mass shootings.
And here's Cracked....

Despite a massive drop in gun violence, spree shootings are such the American craze that VH1's inevitable I Love The 2010s will be nothing but ten episodes of George Takei weeping. And thanks to the Internet, the debate is almost as exhausting as the sorrow. The loudest voices tend to pin blame on a single problem, like gun control or mental health, while groups like the NRA eject responsibility more forcibly than a Chipotle-filled bowel. No one wants to admit that their side might contribute to what is clearly a broad cultural problem. And that can't be more evident than when looking at cinema and the really fucking weird choices filmmakers keep making when it comes to guns.

Movies may not cause people to suddenly become maniacs, but that doesn't mean that Hollywood doesn't have a pants-poopingly bizarre, almost dangerously naive view of how gun violence works. Starting with the fact that ...


Yes... that's their preamble to the their article on how Hollywood doesn't get guns.
Yes... they wrote that article again.

Do note that the NRA is culpable for the mass shootings but not for the decline in overall gun deaths. And do note that Cracked has in the past complained that gun control advocates focus on Mass Shootings when they're only a small part of overall "gun death".

Oh and isn't it funny that now Cracked gets to go "The loudest voices tend to pin blame on a single problem, like gun control "  Pot. To. Kettle.

Of course it wouldn't be Cracked if they went into a creepy anti-free speech setup.  I mean they say that that Hollywood is culpable but they don't say Hollywood should be censored....

And let's quickly go over the list.  They complain that Hollywood doesn't portray guns and injuries realistically.  Duh.

Then they get angry that Hollywood makes people who have lots of guns good guys.
Like  Kay from MIB,  Sarah Connor and Bert Gummer.   And sure the article points out that these people are nuts, the article then complains that they're hero.

Oh and then the article does the expected thing and links to an article calling a dozen guns a "cache" and complains about how "here's no real-world reason to stockpile guns"

But the best whine is at how in movies even anti-gun people will use guns in an emergency.


The next part has Cracked complain that cops and the military aren't good guys vigilantes are!
Need I remind you this is the same Cracked that things the Police are brewing a civil war against America...
[[link]]


But the next part has them complain that Hollywood is making victims look bad!  While also complaining about Death Wish.  Again... Cracked now sounds like Tipper Gore.

And then there's this part.
Saying the "good guy with a gun" argument is bullshit isn't anti-gun, by the way. Any responsible gun owner with a concealed carry permit knows that part of having a gun is not trying to be a Michael Bay character when shit gets real. Without the proper training, trying to get the jump on an active shooter is like pulling out a Hail Mary pistol when you're a '90s action villain: It only ends one way.

Yeah....    funny how the guy completely misses the whole point of disengaging or  you know...  If a gun owner with a CCW didn't think  "good guy with a gun" could make a difference he wouldn't be carrying.

But the best part...  Nubmer 1.

Where the article complains about how movie heroes kill lots of people.

But note the bait and switch.


See what I'm getting at here? While none of these films directly caused gun violence, they certainly glorify everything we find unspeakable when done in the real world. To that crazy fuck with a gun, pop culture has declared that dressing in SWAT gear and dramatically shooting people we don't like is a heroic problem-solver. As a movie fanatic, I would never suggest that filmmakers like Tarantino stop making super-stylized shootout scenes. But it's hard to deny that when a culture makes guns readily available to almost everyone while also idolizing their reckless use in fiction, it's kind of stupid to wonder where this shit is coming from.

Ah...  so in other words.   The writer think his hobby is making people murderers  but he don't want to censor movies.  So instead he demands other people be infringed.

So he can enjoy the movies that you think are warping people and making them more violent.


What happens if movies start to glorify knives or arson?    Will you ban those things too?



And take this movie.



I remember a time when Cracked would have applauded a first person mindless action movie.

Now I'm sure they'd go all Tipper Gore and bemoan how it glorified violence and puts the gun in the audience's hand.

Saturday, February 13, 2016

On Justice Antonin Scalia

Here's Tam's thoughts.

And Sebastian's

This was something that we knew could have happened.  The president having a change to put in another SCOTUS appointment and swing the court to gut the 2nd Amendment.

Gonna be a mess...

(And the cynic in me wonders how long it'll be until the Senate Republicans fold and go with whoever the President picks).

So to... lighten the mood.  Let's pull back to the same pool I get Mr. A and the other folks.

Now remember, *all* of these people are liberal and rather...  forceful about how compasionate adn caring they are.

[Blue-collar-Left-who is anti-police and anti-rich]: Yancy.  My Facebook feed is like an endless celebration right now

[Leftist who internet stalks people and talks about abusing her job at the cable company]: "As I attempted to write something nice about Justice Antonin Scalia, Twitter's 140 character limit suddenly seemed enormous."

And then someone linked in "Ding Dong the Witch is dead"

Because  compassion.

Update:    The same blue-collar lefty had this link to add.  With the caption "Loooool".  Which means as an upshot...  this very white liberal is a-okay with saying Clarence Thomas is akin to a race-traitor slave  mourning the death of his master.   Lovely fellow eh?

Thursday, February 4, 2016

More pearl-clutching from Cracked.

This time it's about how scary the internet is!

For a change of pace... at least they're not whining about guns.

Basically here they are being shocked, shocked about things that are illegal online.

Commence the pearl clutching!

The hilarious part about this is the writer's shock about people being able to buy Brass Knuckles and knives online is that he thought they were already illegal!

Yes it is like someone fretting about the "Demon Rum" or the "Evils of Porn" finding that mail-order exists.

What's cute is the writer getting the vapors over these products being illegal in the first place belies that his concern is merely that such things are sold online. (I mean since there's no background check or prohibited persons class for knives...)

But wait! The article's #1 freakout is on "drug paraphernalia". Yes Cracked is freaking out that bong accessories, little spoons, little vials and other basic products are available on Amazon.

Remember when Cracked advocated for drug legalization?

Oh and for a bonus aside from one line there's one mention of guns in the article (and that's a joke about Chicago).

Hmmm... odd that. Especially given it's in the title of the accompanying audio. Well someone with more patience than me can listen to that.

Wednesday, February 3, 2016

Cracked admits that government is completely incompetent.

Their article on Flint's water mess is interesting for two reasons
1) they admit that government is completely, dangerously incompetent and utterly without redress or accountability.
2) And despite the heresy in 1  the article is an amazing case of "the dog that didn't bark"....

Sure they bemoan how infrastructure is crumbling and how "Our parents were promised Star Trek. We're getting, like, fucking Battletruck,"  but there's no mention of how politicians have been demanding and crowing about their infrastructure spending.

And it's not broached that despite the various governments have been spending huge amounts on "infrastructure" (Remember the Stimulus?) that the money has just "vanished"

Sure the article bemoans the racism in the system, but ignores who is running the system.
(Heck the article breezily sidesteps how this was being used to solely blame the one Republican the media could find...)

It's yet another case of the people screaming for "more government" decrying the actions of "more government."

Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Cracked: Civil War could happen here; let's ban guns!

So... after going on about how great gun control is...

Cracked writes this article.

It Could Happen Here: 5 Ways Civil War Changes Modern Life


Gee this is up there with Cracked talking about how abusive and racist police are... while also demanding gun control... and for the kicker they write on how the Police are starting the next US Civil war.

*golf claps*


Though in classic Cracked fashion they pick the Ukraine as their example...

Which isn't quite a Civil War.   Or if you went ahead with it being a civil war you'd think they'd at least mention Russia's involvement.

Save for these bits...

Within a matter of weeks a huge chunk of Eastern Ukraine, centered around the city of Donetsk, declared itself a new country: "Novorussia." President Yanukovych was ousted on Feb. 22. Our source Anna lived in the city of Donetsk. On March 1, barely a week later, this happened:
"A group of ... aggressive people got out on the streets of Donetsk, and some seemed to be local, others had accents that seemed to ID them as Russian. They seemed to be from Russian cities like Rostov. They came out and put out Russian flags; they took down Ukrainian flags. They surrounded the district council building, and they stormed the building. ... [They] wanted to make this man Pavel Gubarev mayor. People were shouting 'Russiya!' and started taking down Ukrainian flags."....
See, most modern cameras include GPS data in the image files they make. Early in the war one Russian soldier posted a selfie on Instagram that led to the first objective confirmation that Russian soldiers were fighting in Ukraine.

Yeah...  civil war.

Of course Cracked had to avoid mentioning the Russian involvement in Ukraine.

Because acknowledging that Russia has given massive support in material, men, and intelligence and is working to take over parts of Ukraine....

Well what would that make their "It can happen here!"  headline?

It'd make them sound like they think Red Dawn could happen in the US.

Thursday, January 14, 2016

Cracked "We Don't want to Ban Guns"

Wow....  so this is cracke's edgy new angle on guns.




It's ironic that they talk about "feeling safe" as something on the pro-gun side.  And the whole deodand thing.

Now watch this and you'll readily see why the gun control advocates were so heavily invested in their "every day is a mass shooting!" stat.  And you know for saying that nobody wants to take your guns they seem pretty invested in... getting rid of guns.

There's a reason why they don't talk about what gun control they want.

Remember how recently they had a post on how no one wants to take your guns?

On and the brain trust has just figured out that guns are designed to kill people.

Do tell!

Well at least they didn't go for the "the 2nd amendment only protects militias" argument.

Because that would have been... awkwerd given another article that came out today.

4 Facts Anti-Government Militias Don't Want You To Know

Now sure the article does point out that these groups cherry-pick the laws they object to, and that they don't exactly have a record of... competence.

But it wouldn't Be Cracked if they didn't get in the racism angle
With such gems as:

This information was compiled by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a hate group watchdog working in tandem with FBI investigations. You can't deny that most high-profile cases of domestic anti-government and/or white supremacist terrorism (Ruby Ridge, Waco, Posse Comitatus, Oklahoma City) have happened while a Democrat was in office. It's also not hard to guess why these groups would suddenly surge after the election of an African American president who makes gun sales skyrocket every time he farts.
The SPLC?  Yeah that's a non-biased group.   Wait...  Waco was an example of anti-government and/or white supremacist terrorism?  Uh...  okay...

That's kind of a "wet pavement causes rain" way to look at things.  And Posse Comitatus?  Does the writer mean the Act or the Organization?  And if the organization do they mean the shooting of deputies in 2012?   I'd guess so but there's no source.

And it's funny that in an article about an occupation of a building, as a protest of police abuse there's no mention of Occupy or BLM.

Though the best part of the paragraph is "election of an African American president who makes gun sales skyrocket every time he farts".

Right... those paranoid racist gun owners,  stupidly thinking Obama wanted to ban guns, and then stupidly buying guns whenever he advocates for gun control.  How crazy!

But here's the best part,  after the article goes on about how stupid, racist, and politically biases these militias are but what's the top item?

#1. These Guys Are Absolutely Right To Not Trust The Government
Oh, well then.


But here's the best part, see it's not that the goverment is acutally abusive or dangerous.  Nope it's that these guys are all vets that are ill treated.

Yup!  It's the old "dangerous veteran" chestnut.

With a bonus swipe at gun shows:

 Maybe it has more to do with a system that can spit out someone like a shell-shocked Timothy McVeigh and completely lose him in a sea of gun shows and angry anti-American rants.

Yes... use a guy who murdered people via a giant bomb to take a swipe at gun owners.


Tuesday, January 12, 2016

Obama totally doesn't want to ban guns! Says Writer that totally wants to ban guns.

That's right!

Cracked's  Luke McKinney  is at it again.

When we last saw him in September he was spewing quite a lot of usual bile.

Where in about every other paragraph he mocked the intelligence and sexuality of gun owners.

This is a guy who was visibly angry at a lack of bans and confiscation.   A man who thought even hunting wasn't a valid reason to own guns (#5 on the preceding link) .

And here he is doing 20 questions On Obama's recent executive actions.

And in short... he's pretty correct and shows that he's fairly informed on the legal rules on purchasing and how the Executive Actions would change things.

And it's (especially by Luke's standards) very civil.

Isn't it odd that a guy who doesn't think there's any valid reasons to own guns and demanded some pretty strong gun control is so calm about Obama's actions?  You'd think he'd be livid, right?  

I mean this is a guy that couldn't write go two paragraphs without an insult to gun owners.

Of course the first question shows why Luke is taking this tack.  All of a sudden a writer that was all about gun bans and confiscation is telling us that no one wants gun bans and confiscations.  Especially the president!

And lest we forget Obama did spend months lobbying congress to pass an Assault Weapons Ban, and endorsed states that did pass assault weapons bans.  Including states that did away with grandfathering and meant that gun owners had to give up their guns.

Though Luke's change in attitude means a lack of sincerity either then or now.


Heck let's just track  how Luke ends these articles.

Luke's  June post:
Check out more NRA nutcasery with 3 Reasons It's Time To Stop Taking The NRA Seriously and The 4 Most Meaningless Arguments Against Gun Control. 
Enjoy imaginary worlds where guns make sense with The Strange History Of Terminator Games and The Greatest Video Game Gun Of All Time.
His September post:

Do you want more rootin' tootin' anti-gun argumentin'? Of course you do! We've got more adventures in all-American gunplay right here, with 5 Reasons Even Gun Owners Should Hate The NRA and The 4 Most Meaningless Arguments Against Gun Control.
And don't forget that minigun barrages are entirely reasonable in professional, movie-invented, killer robot and/or generic foreign despot scenarios. That's why Luke gathered The Toughest Action Dads In Movie History and The Most Advanced Terminator Games Ever Made in handy lists, for YOU.

And today's:
Luke openly admits he has a bias when it comes to the gun control debate. Read more from him on the subject in 7 Incredibly Biased Arguments Against Gun Control and find some common ground in the gun control debate after reading 6 Things Gun Lovers And Haters Can Agree On.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see why James Bond needs a lot more than a silencer to be stealthy in 5 Gun Myths You Probably Believe (Thanks To Movies), and watch other videos you won't see on the site!

Huh how about that.  Why it's like he decided to back off on how much he hates guns.
Shame there's links showing he's got a bit more than a "bias".