Never mind: United Way Reverses Course: Raffle for AR-15, Other Firearms Resume – “The United Way of Otero County New Mexico was told to halt its raffle of firearms after a board member of another United Way chapter filed a complaint to United Way Worldwide headquarters, but the organization has now reversed course. United Way Worldwide responded by sending a letter to the Otero County chapter threatening “to revoke their United Way affiliation if the chapter did not terminate the raffle and remove any mention of it from their webpage.”
California’s culture war on guns continues apace: Fair board will discuss future of gun shows – “’Let’s not continue to use the public resources and assets of … California for encouraging this public health crisis and contributing to the growing number of deaths of innocent Americans, young and old!’ the letter states. ‘The glorification of guns does not square with the fairgrounds’ opportunity to provide wholesome family entertainment,’ Del Mar resident RoseAnn Sharp said during the public comment period. ‘The glorification of guns and ammunition is not a memory you should promote.’”
In Europe, Terrorists Arm Themselves on the Black Market While Populists Champion Self-Defense Rights – “A rising populist politician challenges federal officials’ schemes to tighten gun laws in response to high-profile mass killings. Making existing laws ever-more draconian is foolish, she says, since “honest citizens are the ones affected, not those who procure weapons via the darknet,”—a direct reference to a recent shooting incident in which the killer illegally acquired a weapon from black market sites via anonymous Tor software.”
The ATF’s Nonsensical Non-Searchable Gun Databases, Explained – “The ATF’s record-keeping system lacks certain basic functionalities standard to every other database created in the modern age. Despite its vast size, and importance to crime fighters, it is less sophisticated than an online card catalog maintained by a small town public library. To perform a search, ATF investigators must find the specific index number of a former dealer, then search records chronologically for records of the exact gun they seek. They may review thousands of images in a search before they find the weapon they are looking for. That’s because dealer records are required to be ‘non-searchable’ under federal law. Keyword searches, or sorting by date or any other field, are strictly prohibited.” And the problem is…?
Courting the Fudd vote: Gun-control group backs McGinty; she says she’ll work with hunters – “Picking up the backing of the gun-control group CeaseFirePA in a war of endorsements, Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Katie McGinty pledged Wednesday to work with Pennsylvania sportsmen and hunters on gun measures if she is elected. McGinty said her Republican rival, Sen. Pat Toomey, views gun control ‘as a political calculation, as compared to a matter of principle’ and slammed him for not acting on gun measures since sponsoring the failed Manchin-Toomey bill for background checks in 2013.”
We should be so lucky as to have all our public health crises mirror “gun violence”, which continues to diminish year over year. If it worked that way, in a few decades, Americans would be nigh well immortal.
They would, if the government would stop stealing our money and perversing incentives and regulating us into poverty.
Still waiting on that $2500 discount Obama promised, mine hasn’t shone up yet. Has yours?
I’m happy I don’t have a “regular” job that extorts money from me for shite like United Way. Hating gun rights but supporting baby murder for how many years? And what’s the deal In Pennsylvania? I thought after Gabby Giffords gave the nod to Toomey he’d have the fudd vote wrapped up…
I’m happy I don’t have a “regular” job that extorts money from me for shite like United Way.
Oh, brother, you know whereof you speak. Every company I’ve been with has twisted my arm hard to contribute to the United Way. When I was a little baby lawyer, I didn’t have the stones to say “no.” But when I got a bit of experience, I said “hell no, and don’t ever come into my office again trying to extort a contribution from me.”
It’s amazing how authoritarian a person can be who knows where the bodies are buried.
The guy who sits next to me at work is our shop rep for united way, every year he asks and I say “No thanks.” And that’s it until next year.
I resent the hard sell, guilt trip on so-called charitable donations, whether at work, the grocery store checkout line or wherever. Most of the time, I don’t even know what those charities are. None of the time do I know how much their leaders skim off the top, er, I mean, are compensated, or how much actually goes toward the stated mission.
We have a select few causes that we support, organizations whose purpose, efficacy, and rectitude we’re confident of. The rest of the groups, I’d just as soon release the hounds on them whenever they come a knockin’. Doesn’t matter if it’s Save the Whales, Feed the Children, or even Release the Hounds.
Ah. Release the Hounds. A noble and worthy cause.
Especially the hounds with bees in their mouths, and when they bark they shoot bees at you.
I support a smaller, lesser known charity. It’s name is “Released Hounds Feeding Children To Whales.” They do fine work there.
@Jeff O: Classic Homerian quote!
I’ve learned to enjoy being that A hole. Everytime I’m in line at the check out an some twit asks “do you want to donate a dollar to paraplegic children?” I say “Nope.” Loud and proud with mt head held high, and I notice it’s them who start to feel awkward.
I used to work at a place that not only twisted arms to get United Way contributions, but went so far as to gather employees in meeting rooms in groups to elicit donations right there. The idea being that group peer pressure would get people to contribute, as they’d be afraid of looking bad in front of their co-workers. Not cool.
There’s a real interesting psychological dynamic going on in such a situation. The pressure to go along is intense, but if one or two people buck the trend, the whole thing collapses. Everyone is looking for an out, and if someone else takes the heat for being the instigating asshole, they have their out. Especially if that person explains that their reason for not playing nice is solely because they resent the strong-arm, public-shaming tactics, and would have generously contributed otherwise.
I was excused from attending the mandatory arm-twisting meetings after that.
Stinkeye with the deadeye.
Kudos, sir.
LOL. One of the few advantages of getting old.
It is amazing how many well known charities are front organizations for the Democrat Party. They usually funnel their money to political activism, and if they get caught, they disband and reform under a different name. Many times, you can follow the money to the Tides foundation and Soros. I do not contribute to random charities because I cannot trust where the money goes. This year is easy, because every charitable dollar goes to pro-2nd amendment charities that I know.
When our United Way coordinator would come by I would just hand him or her a long list of improprieties, wrong-doings, and embezzelment that various chapters of UW have been up to over the years.
I was always that ‘one person’ that kept our group from 100% participation.
We’re “very strongly encouraged” to make a contribution but at least we get to pick and choose. I send dollars to Appleseed.
I worked for the USPS that hassled us to have money taken from our paychecks for charities approved by the federal gov’t. (they couldn’t have more than 20% operating expenses) . Being the only one in my office, not to sign up…I was greatly chided by management and called ‘cheap’ I explained that I only contribute to places that I actually see where my $ is going…local fire and ambulance corps and the local animal shelter…it did shut them up.
If what McGinty said about Toomey is true, it could be the “wrong people, right thing” principle of Milton Friedman finally working
“I do not believe that the solution to our problem is simply to elect the right people. The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion which will make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing. Unless it is politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing, the right people will not do the right thing either, or it they try, they will shortly be out of office.” -Milton Friedman
Of course, a constitutional candidate is never right. Standing on constitutional principles is “ignoring the people’s mandate” and listening to voters who happen harbor some small glowing coal of liberty is acting “as a political calculation, as compared to a matter of principle -McGinty”
Of late, the most reliable metric for configuring a moral compass is if a man draws criticism from a slime with a (D) next to the name, a man is on the right track. Ultimately, there will be no life in peace and liberty alongside these creatures. Jefferson and Adams feuded for decades, but those two men had more in common than a reader of this site has with > 50% of the population of this country.
Two or more Hillary Supreme Court nominations will guarantee that your bullets and blood are the only ladder rungs leading back to a place where liberty exists. I hope the never-Trumpists have realized that. Obama can be erased with a Trump victory. Obamacare is the only major obstacle that can’t be expunged “with a phone and a pen.” Hil’s nominees will require remedies of a more high FPS nature, and that is a considerable personal risk compared to voting for the Trump.
And yet I saw an article today with the headline cancer was going to soon be the leading killer in America. Makes sense to me.
It should, cancer is the epitome of a progressive disease, it progresses until you are *dead*…
You’ve got that backwards. Progressivism is the epitome of a cancerous disease. It grows until it parasitically kills its host.
The American Cancer Society projects 595,000 cancer deaths (all cancers) in 2016.
Preventable medical errors will kill 400,000.
Which is why the American Medical Association wants to focus on guns.
Good one Ralph!
True as can be!
LOL.
And, yup, gotta focus so darn much on those ~9000 murders or accidental deaths involving a firearm each year. Massive public heath crisis, that. Due entirely to the guns, of course. No guns would mean no more gang violence and domestic murders, naturally. Happy shiny people, one and all, if the guns would just disappear.
With some Google-Fu I came up with this:
Number of medical doctors in US: about 700,000
Number of medical professionals in US: about 5.6 million
Number of deaths from medical malpractice per year: about 400,000
Number of docs per death: less than 2, so an average doctor will be involved in a death from malpractice every other year.
Number of medical professionals per death: 14
Number of guns in US: about 350 million
Number of deaths by guns in US per year: about 35,000
Number of guns per death: 10,000
What’s more dangerous, Docs or Glocks?
Death from cancer is a variable statistic. My mother died of lung cancer a few years ago. She was 91. Was it really cancer, or old age?
Maybe someone can answer a long-standing question I have had on this subject. Is “cause of death” somehow limited to one thing, or could we add up all the different things people are killed by and infer that 400 million people have died in America this year? For example, just from this thread, if 400,000 died from medical malpractice and 600,000 from cancer, does that add up to 1,000,000, or something less due to an overlap? If 200,000 of the deaths from medical malpractice were related to cancer, is the total 800,000?
That ATF database should be even harder than that to access.
Like at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark? I want that too.
Wouldn’t “nonexistent” be about right? WTF is it supposed to be good for? How much are we spending on it each year, from manufacturers’ costs to recordkeeping and storage at ATF?
“…and importance to crime fighters…”
What is this “importance to crime fighters” of which I so often hear? The last time I heard about a trace of a firearm, the San Bernardino shootings, the killers were already dead. So what crime was it exactly that they intended to fight for which the trace data was so important?
Is there any evidence that the ATF database or any database for that matter has every stopped a crime or solved a crime? It seems to me that standard everyday investigation is what solves the far majority of crimes. The ATF database is just like the chalk line around the body. It is a bit of evidence but it alone solves absolutely nothing.
I look at Fast and Furious — how is that going? If that database was so wonderful we could recover all the lost guns. Instead, we only figure out it was a lost gun after it has been used to kill some Mexicans and the police in Mexico finally decided to shoot and kill the cartel member and recover the gun. Yep, a F&F gun. So what? big deal!
” Fair board will discuss future of gun shows.” I thought we’d been there, done that. The Nordykes, after many years of litigation in both state and federal courts, finally were allowed to hold guns shows at the Alameda County Fairgrounds (which had banned the events).
Day what again? 99.9% of the time ATF traces are basically an exercise in statistics, used to justify their own budget.
Raffle information here: http://uwoterocounty.org/cms-view-page.php?page=firearms-calendar-raffle
Not for nothing, but they do seem to get the information fairly rapidly when the situation demands it…