Some fascinating firearms history

Forgotten Weapons looks at the Mannlicher 1885 semiauto-rifle.
One of, if not the, first weapons of its type.

Truely a fascinating bit of history, and one can see how it can influence the designs of subsequent weapons for over a century.

Oh Cracked.... Maybe this week isn't the right time to decry free speech or Timing is everything.

I wouldn't normally keep going to the Cracked well but...

They keep giving these low, slow pitches.

Once again Cracked plays the game of article title is different from the url with 5 Cases Of Free Speech That Will Make You Hate Freedom

With the url of: /5-groups-people-who-will-make-you-hate-free-speech/

And yes... this comes out days after the Garland Texas shooting...    You know...  timing!

And to be clear here's how the article starts:

Knowing how to make good use of our right to free speech can be tricky. We all know you can't scream "fire!" in a crowded theater, but would it really be so bad if we were to lower the threshold just a skootch? Yeah, probably, but while certainly no American has any sort of God-given right to go through life without ever being offended, when that theater we were just talking about starts filling up with wild-eyed yahoos jabbering things like, "Slap your children so we can stop the fags from putting the Devil music inside us with vaccines!" one might start seeing the lure in tweaking the limit to, let's not say silence, but ... encourage those folks to shut the fuck up for the sake of society at large. Folks like ...

Damn.  And emphasis in original.

You see.  Using mockery and satire to put down people you disagree with (as the article itself does) that's free speech.

But when you couple that "encourage" with openly lamenting why that the threshold for free speech is too high...  well then it starts to get a bit scary.

That it's framed as " wild-eyed yahoos jabbering things"  well that just puts a nice level of classim on it.

Now in fairness.  The article was pretty even (as could be with 5 entries) of right wing and left wing asshattery.

Though Cracked...  a bit of advice,  when you run an article that asserts, as one of its main concluding points, that "the line between rich and poor has a barbwire fence built over it"  don't release it concurrently with the above article where you bemoan that powerful and well connected are legally unable to jail "wild-eyed yahoos" who say things you don't like.

First those damn robots took our fry-cook jobs...

Then they took our square-jawed space-plane pilot jobs!

Or was it the other way around?  

Seriously, here's some info on the X73 spaceplane.  Neat!

There's Blaming the Victim and then there's....

Okay...  Sandhya Somashekhar of the Washing Post has decided that the Garland Texas attack was analogous to hunting over bait:

If the contest was intended as bait, it worked. Police say two men drove 1,000 miles from Phoenix, shot at a police car outside the event and were quickly killed by one of the hired guards. The shooting has been condemned by Muslim leaders, and Geller, too, has come under fire for staging an event many viewed as purposely provocative.

Well then.     If saying Geller brought it upon herself is the metaphorical "She shouldn't have been wearing such a short skirt."

This...   this is: "Damn that Jezebel for using her harlot-whiles to get those nice boys kilt by the police! It wasn't their fault she got their dander up!"


And then the article goes on to talk about how Geller was "almost gleeful" afterwards and how bad of a person she is.

Uh... MSN...  yeah,  even assholes get Free Speech rights.

It's sort of like how  just because someone has a criminal record,  like say Freddie Gray...  still has the rights of due process, especially with regards to the police.

And for a bonus.... Geller might be an anti-Islam bigot.  I don't know her well enough to make that call.

What I do know...  she's not the one equating Muslims with some sort of game animal that can be predictably baited to a spot and then shot by hunters.  That's all on Somashekhar.

Huh, at least we know the writer's against provocative art that offends the sensitivities of gun-totin' religious conservatives.  Course... I'd worry about the incentive system being setup...

The latest group of "Only Ones" Theater Managers.

So... Cracked has had a bit of a... history of putting up some anti-gun screeds.

Now for amusement look at item #1 of this list  on behind the scenes at movie theaters.

Most managers started carrying a gun under their coat or at least had one in their office. It wasn't something the company was keen on, but when you are actually in the building ... you become aware of every gap in your security,

Huh...

Now, personally, I applaud the management for taking the defense of their patrons seriously and realizing the limitations of their security.

But... I'm not the management of said companies that, sometimes,  ban carry in their theaters  or try to keep their employees from carrying.

And I'm not a publication that will occasionally run articles laughing off self-defense as a paranoid fantasy and demanding broad firearms confiscation.

But hey, maybe Cracked thinks  Theater Managers are, like cops, among the "Only Ones" fit to carry guns.

The Tyranny of May Issue... Food Truck edition

Guess what,  Cali, NYC, and NJ all have onerous permitting requirements for getting a... food truck.

Surprise!

But don't worry, I'm sure there's no favoritism or other abuses in the issuing of those permits.

I figured since Craked posed something insanely stupid yesterday, I'd go into the slush pile for something to post today.

And once again mass stupidity brings me back into bloggin...

So I was out sick for a while and then just... stopped posting.

But then   Cracked decided to post an article entitled:  6 Reasons (Beyond Racism) Why Cops Keep Killing People

And yes,  reason #4. More Gun Freedom = More Police Shootings.


That's right!  In an article that's about cops killing unarmed citizens, the solution they present is "Let's make the citizens even more unarmed!"

What I love is they cite Canada as being such an epic gun control place.

Meanwhile, Germany and Australia had six cop-related deaths, and some people in Canada are currently scandalized that they've been averaging an estimated 25 deaths a year. Even accounting for population, and even if we go with the FBI's conservative (read: bullshit) statistic of 400 or so killings a year, US cops are still insanely prolific in this area. So what's the difference? It's not like these other countries don't have crime, racism, or police corruption -- shit, Europe probably invented those things.

Uh...   Cracked.  Canada's got a population of 35 million.  Oh wait, why normalize for population.  Or mention that Canada's got 30 guns per 100 residents.

Oh!  But they do mention the Canadian gun registry...  but not that was repealed.

But more importantly, they've also had troubles with guns. Like America, most of the countries we mentioned have had big gun massacres in the past 25 years. Unlike America, they've actually done something about it. In Australia, for example, 35 people were killed by a mentally ill gunman in 1996, and they reacted by immediately passing stricter laws that forced gun owners to surrender some types of firearms. We'll remind you that this is a country where saying "But what if a giant crocodile shows up in my living room?!" isn't bullshit.

Now do note this guy screaming "We have to DO something!"  immediately before this was hemming and hawing about mandating body cameras for the police.

And then the writer goes into a general aside for several paragraphs about how great gun control is (not even in relation to the police). And how the US is getting more violent (which it isn't  but hey he's on a roll...)

And then ends the section with this gem.

 English bobbies can afford to go on patrol with basically no means of self-defense except tasers and those pointy hats, but American cops are trained to be afraid of us because we might have guns. And obviously we can't just get rid of our guns now, because they are dang cool and awes-- uh, protection. We need them for protection, yeah. Lord knows the cops aren't going to help you in an emergency; they're too busy shooting people who might have guns.

So remember!   If you think you need protection from someone being violent you're just a paranoid.

But the state*totally* needs to take your guns away, because then all these cops who, thanks to 9/11 and drugs, are on a literal war mentality (item #3) and have no accountability (item #1)  will be extra nice to you!

That's right,  disarm so those paranoid cops who think they're in a war and have no accountability won't consider you a threat.   (Unless they think you have an illegal gun, because those will totally be gone).

So the author is framing the police as a paramilitary occupying force that can do whatever they want,  and his idea is to disarm the victims.

It's funny that the writer took such pains to deflect the whole "cops are racist" because if you remembered the disproportionate issue with regard to minorities then his gun control screed is basically...  "We need to ban guns for black people because cops keep thinking black people have illegal guns!  What? That's racist.  Fine   then ban guns for everyone!  That way those racist cops won't have to think."


Oh,  and as a bonus item #2 talks about how cops are trained to kill instead of wound.  Interestingly the writer points out that, contrary to Hollywood, is sensible.    And then he goes on about how cops think they'll need to shoot someone with switchblade.  Now he might be mocking the cops for being paranoid or think that's a legit fear.  Still either way...  doesn't that point out that cops will kill people even if guns were banned?

Heck, it's not like there was recent protests due to an officer shooting a man who he knew was disarmed.  Or that such incidents haven't happened (justified or no).

Note...  this is the guy who was just going on about how there needs to be mass gun control (specifically citing  handgun bans and registration and confiscation)  to make the police less "jumpy".


Though the real bonus comes from the first line... "In the time it took us to research and write this article, a man named Freddie Gray went from living anonymously in Baltimore, to lying comatose"

Wait...  wasn't Mr. Gray arrested because cops enforcing were Maryland's knife control laws?

Never-mind that Mr. Gray was killed... not in the split second of the cops confronting the man, never-mind that the cops were able to put him into custody.  Never-mind that the mortal injuries received had nothing to do with any firearms.  Never-mind that Maryland has more gun control at the level of the countries he stated.

Nope!  The answer clearly is: Cops get machine guns,  the proles shouldn't even have pocket knives.

Yeah... you can see why the fractal stupidity of this required me to post.