APTOPIX Japan Animation Studio Fire
An investigator takes pictures inside the Kyoto Animation Studio building destroyed in an arson attack Friday, July 19, 2019, in Kyoto, Japan. A man screaming "You die!" burst into the animation studio in Kyoto, doused it with a flammable liquid and set it on fire Thursday, killing dozens of people in the attack that shocked the country and brought an outpouring of grief from anime fans. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
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We’ve been repeatedly told by all of the smartest people in politics and the media that mass shootings such as those that we suffer in the US occasionally don’t happen in other countries.

That’s a claim that’s been proven false time and time again in places like New Zealand, Norway, France, Canada…we could go on. And those are just some of the killings using firearms.

But guns aren’t even necessary. Those determined to kill and kill a lot of people find other ways as well. They use knives, cars, trucks, bombs and, as we saw this week in Japan, a simple can of gasoline. It doesn’t take much ingenuity or imagination to get your hands on the everyday tools needed to kill dozens of people very quickly if that’s what you’re determined to do.

And yet we’re repeatedly told — scolded, really — that the impulse and means to kill others in large numbers is somehow unique to America and its embarrassing (to the effete) relationship with and culture of civilian gun ownership.

We live in a country of over 330 million people who own more than 400 million firearms (probably a lot more). And yet we suffer only about 35,000 gun-related deaths each year, two-thirds of those self-inflicted. Most of the remainder are gang and crime-related killings that no amount of gun control will eliminate.

Every death is a tragedy. But it’s worth noting the leading causes of deaths in this country.

Courtesy CDC.org

Note that deaths by medical error or malpractice don’t appear on that list (they’d rank #3 if they did).

Deaths due to “gun violence” in the US are exceedingly rare for our population size and are dwarfed by the number of assaults, robberies, rapes and murders prevented by defensive gun uses every year.

The argument that the US has a gun problem — or that more guns means more deaths — simply doesn’t hold water.

Courtesy gunfacts.info

But details like those, facts, and examples from other nations won’t stop this country’s Civilian Disarmament Industrial Complex or their compliant media stenographers from pushing that message. It’s their business and they’re not about to give it up.

Here’s the CCRKBA’s message regarding the murder of 33 people in Japan using a match.

JAPAN ARSON ATTACK PROVES MASS MURDER MANIACS FIND OTHER METHODS, SAYS CCRKBA

BELLEVUE, WA – The terrible arson attack in Japan Thursday that has reportedly claimed at least 33 lives and injured 36 others should serve as a grim, but necessary reminder that even in what is essentially a “gun-free” society, murderous maniacs will find a way to commit mass mayhem, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today.

“We keep hearing from the gun prohibition lobby that in Japan, there are no mass shootings because average citizens can’t own firearms,” CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb observed. “But the shocking attack at a Kyoto animation studio provides stark evidence that madmen intent on killing have other means of creating tragedies.

“So far,” he continued, “we have not heard any motive for this attack. But we do know this much: Mass killers aren’t impaired by laws that restrict firearms, so when anti-gun-rights extremists in the United States point to Japan as an example for this country to follow, Thursday’s horrific incident belies anything they have to say.”

Published reports say the suspect in this attack was screaming “You die!” as he doused the building with some type of flammable liquid and then set it on fire.

“Our thoughts and sympathy go out to the victims of this attack and their families,” Gottlieb said. “There is never a good excuse for the mass slaughter of innocent people, no matter what the means or methods. We can only hope that Japanese authorities focus on the person responsible for this atrocity, unlike in our country where people invariably try to attach blame and attack the rights of millions of their fellow citizens in an effort to press a political agenda.

“The blame for this attack, as with any crime involving firearms, stolen trucks or bombs rests solely with the perpetrator,” Gottlieb stated. “It would be wrong in this case, as it is wrong in any mass victim attack, to penalize millions of law-abiding citizens and erode their liberties when they had nothing at all to do with the outrage.”

With more than 650,000 members and supporters nationwide, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (www.ccrkba.org) is one of the nation’s premier gun rights organizations. As a non-profit organization, the Citizens Committee is dedicated to preserving firearms freedoms through active lobbying of elected officials and facilitating grass-roots organization of gun rights activists in local communities throughout the United States.

 

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96 COMMENTS

  1. Everyone conveniently leaves out abortions…600,000+/year in the USA alone. Lives ended/terminated before the first breath…no chance of survival…no choice given.
    Think…on any other planet a fetus would be considered life…even by the farthest left dem/lib scientist…but not here on Earth. Hmmmm.
    Don’t get me wrong. I am pro-choice and pro 2A.
    Many abortions are to dems/libs…so a win-win.
    Bet you censor/delete this one as inappropriate.

    • It’s not inappropriate. It’s completely off-topic and has nothing to do with guns or this post. This is exactly what I was talking about in Friday’s post.

      Leaving this here as an example. Any replies will be deleted.

      • Not entirely off-topic, Dan, in that it is a statistic missing from the list you posted at the beginning of your post, as were the medical related deaths, and those two would have pushed even suicide off of the top ten.

        But in any other context or relationship, yes, a discussion for another forum.

      • The whole statistic argument is irrelevant. Regardless of cause of death. Statistics neither save lives or cost lives. They are an easily manipulated tool used to justify an Agenda. The Bill of Rights was not derived from or based on statistics. It will cannot be Protected/Preserved or Destroyed by statistics. It lives or dies on the Blood of Patriotism or Tyranny. The Victor will decide. Everything else is nothing more than Hyperbole.

  2. The “Green New Deal” folks would come for your gasoline, if they thought they could get away with it. The socialist tyrants always seek to control you. They are okay with liberty only when you are doing what they want you to do.

      • “Ignorant nonsense that isn’t even on the topic of firearms.”

        There’s nothing ignorant about it, and it relates to guns since it’s the same warped political Leftist ideology that wants very badly to put Leftists on the SCOTUS so the ‘Heller-McDonald’ decisions can be reversed to gut the 2A.

        It’s all there, in black-and-white, what they really want, their socialist utopia where single-family dwellings are outlawed so more ‘efficient’ forms of housing can be mandated, like apartment buildings…

    • First they came for the evil, black rifles, but I did not object, because nobody needs a killing machine.

      Then they came for the “high capacity” magazines, and I did not object, because nobody needs more than two shots, Bidened into the air.

      Then they came for the folding things that go up, pistol grips, muzzle devices, slings, swivels, n clipazines, and I did not object, because nobody needs a defensive arm, configured to work for defense.

      Then they came for the “body armor” and “tactical gear”, and I did not object, because I wear Dockers.

      Then they came for the bullets, of lead, of steel, of shape to expand, or clad to not, and I did not object because nobody would try to use those on me.

      Then they came for the fixed knives, and I did not object because I did not need (right then) more than a less robust knife, folded.

      Then they came for the flick knives, and I did not object, because there are other ways to open a folding knife; then they declared anything you can open a “flick knife”, and I was S O L.

      Then they came for the kitchen knives, and I did not object, because I do not cook. Thereafter, I was on the menu.

      Then they came for the rental trucks, and I did not object, because I’m not a spandex commando.

      Then they came for me, and I never did know why, through their helmets n clubs. Or who — chartered, or independents; enforcers, or opportunists.

      I was gassing up my A T V when they came, shouting “Remember Kyoto!”

  3. The worse school killings was the 1927 Bath school massacre, in Bath, Michigan. No gun was used, dynamite was used.

    • Very true. It was apparently an act of revenge. He murdered his wwife, firebombed his own farm, possibly as a distraction to draw away the fire department from the school. His bombs in the school basement began to go off. He killed others by driving to the school with a bomb in his car and blowing himself and bystanders up.

      One sick piece of work, and still the worst mass murder at an American school ever:

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster

      https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/1927-bombing-remains-americas-deadliest-school-massacre-180963355/

      Hope such a horror is never bested or repeated.

      • Don’t forget the 87 dead in the Happy Land arson fire in New York in 1990. This is the type of massacre that will result from “red flag” laws.

        If there is enough evidence to satisfy confiscating someone’s firearms, there’s enough evidence to arrest and hold the person for trial or mental health evaluation.

        • Or the unknown hundreds that died during the Chicago World’s Exposition in 1893. The killer had a complex a city block square, and dissolved the victim’s bodies in acid…

        • That’s serial killing, not mass murder. It’s entirely different. The first is a victim or two at a time killed over many instances. Mass murder is many deaths in a single incident.

        • I have it on good authority that chicken poop makes a great low grade explosive. I guess that anyone who raises chickens should be suspect of evil desires.

    • To paraphrase the psychopathic wife of my marijunna bootlegging tenant who shot at my children, “Andrew Keyhoe was old. He didn’t have time to shoot at children, so he used pyrotol.

  4. Watch what they do, not what they say. The ‘smartest’ people in the world usually have security guards. They live in gated communities, with a guard. They know guns save lives. They just want to save their lives, not yours.

  5. Yes, because once again the concept of “Gun Violence” is ridiculous on its face. No inanimate object can be violent or non-violent, only people do violence.

    • Still haven’t been able to teach my guns to be violent. Mine are all law abiding.
      Is there a “how to” manual available at Amazon?

      • “Still haven’t been able to teach my guns to be violent.”

        Ship them all to me, and all your ammunition, and I will do my very best to train them at the range… 😉

  6. The left has this strange notion you can cure the evil in the heart of men via taking away inanimate objects.

    Objects do not make a person evil. You can argue for genetics, upbringing or both but they are far more important than an object is.

    Arson should be a talking point when gun grabbers talk about the good it will do. There are plenty of horrible examples from the Upstairs Lounge to the ones in Australia.

    • I here you. I once had a conversation with a guy (who was in college at the time) that you could breed out things like anger and greed from the human population within two generations. These love this kind of nonsense, it being feel good BS at its best, or rhetoric that leads to mass graves at its worst.

        • “Did you ask him to outline his method?”

          It’s quite simple, actually. Anyone who shows signs of those traits before puberty is involuntarily sterilized. After puberty, call it a ‘retroactive sterilization’…

      • ?!?

        Um, it took the God Emperor (Herbert’s Dune) over 3,000 years to breed what he wanted-kinda with absolute political, economic, n religious control. Also prescience, absolute historical knowledge n 1,000s of generations of breeding records to start with. (And he was unable to completely squelch gun technology.)

        Of course that’s good data. If we have to listen to their tales of imaginary gun free worlds, they can listen to Herbert’s nature augmented visions conjured in a fire watch tower. Which is more real, after all?

        • And the reality of the Soviet Union created the polar-opposite “Homo Sovieticus”.

      • Humans are not animals. The intellect a human has allows them to have free will on another level beyond animals. The more intelligent the human has the less likely they are to personally behave like a wild animal, but the more likely they are to take over society one way or another, then get dummies to follow along with their plans.

        Supremacists, who are eugenicists, believe they can breed humans just like animals. They cull human populations like they do animal populations. Their end goal is to create a “breed” that will follow orders, their orders. So they will setup a system to dumb down the “other” group and try very hard to make their group more intelligent.

        • the wild animals are quick to reveal themselves.
          the methodical, plotting individuals are of concern.

  7. ”Killing is a matter of will, not weapons.
    You cannot control the act itself
    by passing laws about the means employed.”
    The late Col Jeff Cooper, 1958
    Handgun expert and founder of Gunsite Academy
    Making good people helpless does not make bad people harmless.
    For once I agree with Bill O’Reilly. Bad guys shooting people is the price of freedom. Liberty is risky business. That’s why our Founding Fathers recognized our God-given right to shoot back.
    A politician with a law never stops a bad guy with a gun. He only controls the good guys, which is his true agenda. The bad guy with a gun…..or the mentally deficient guy with a gun……or the terribly distraught family member of a gun shooting victim…….is the politician’s Useful Idiot Tool to achieve his agenda.

  8. Think about it.

    Gun control is not the issue; it’s the disarming of America under the guise of government protection against crime.

    Look at the FBI crime stats…..cities with oppressive gun control have the highest crime rate.

    How stupid does the gov’t think we are?…perhaps they’re right.

  9. As I’ve mentioned previously on this site my favourite question to anti gun people in Australia is – what is the second and third biggest mass murder in Australia? No one has ever got the answer.

    Both are fires – Childers back packers hostel and Brisbane underground night club.

    Evil intentions are what matters not the method.

  10. I am an anime fan–some would even say an “otaku” (an extreme fan)–and Kyoto Animation produced some of my favorite anime series. I was horrified and heartbroken when I learned of this monstrous act. Yet, in the back of my mind, a thought surfaced. “If he had come in there with a gun, he couldn’t have killed so many so fast. If he had come in with a gun, they victims would have had more of a fighting chance to stop him. If someone at KyoAni had a gun, they could have stopped him much sooner.”

    Owning and carrying a gun as a law-abiding citizen is not a bad thing. It is a prudent thing.

    I recently changed jobs and now work for a company that enforces a no-weapons policy. As a new hire, I am uncertain as to how to attempt to educate the corporate leadership that this is a recipe for tragedy. Perhaps the tragedy in Kyoto could help.

    • Quite simply, you can’t. They don’t want the liability of armed employees. They don’t want a lawsuit from the would be shooter’s family.

    • My father always said: “Never try to teach a pig to sing…It wastes your time and annoys the pig”. That’s the pen you now work in. Live in the slop or move to a new pen. Keep Your Powder Dry.

    • Through your coworkers. Take people to the range. Have friendly discussions, as apolitical as possible. (I try to avoid those at work regardless of the views of the person I’m talking with.)

      But, softly, gently.

    • Sadly, Moltar is exactly right. Any corporate lawyer will tell his clients that not allowing guns has the least risk of tort exposure. Until the US adopts loser pays, this is unlikely to change.

      The maximum risk, in many locations, is possible employment termination if you choose to discreetly carry concealed anyway. Consultant a lawyer for the law in your area.

  11. @DZ; “Every death is a tragedy”
    Not so. That’s why the term “justifiable homicide” was coined.
    Events of mass murder are a tragedy, however. No good excuse for this.
    Good article, thanks.

    • “Every death is a tragedy.”

      Sometimes a particular death is the lesser tragedy. Sometimes, wisdom is choosing between evils. Some individuals have the strength to choose, if they must, and choose to hold the means so they can.

      10’s to 100’s of million citizens’ fire arms in the US. If they were tbe.pro lem, we’d all be dead already.

  12. I’ve been warning people about the havoc a can of gas and a road flare could create. MS-13 like machetes. Europeans favored large trucks for a while. And I’ve warned the anti-cutlery mayor of London about sharp sticks, flame tempered. What was that incident in a Tokyo subway a couple of decades ago or so, gas wasn’t it? A tanker truck of ammonia and a hose down a manhole wouldbe real nasty.

    • What was that incident in a Tokyo subway a couple of decades ago or so, gas wasn’t it?

      From what I remember, they used a chemical gas the military use to kill people.

    • A 500+ gallon tank of anhydrous ammonia, bust loose in a tightly packed urban area, would be a total disaster, with deaths possibly in the thousands.

      It’s cheap, cheap, cheap, easily obtained, easily transported (propane cylinders or tanks will do just fine) and hugs the ground. It’s vicious, vicious stuff, which kills a few farmers and farm workers every year. It exists because it is the cheapest form of nitrogen-based fertilizer there is.

      Anhydrous is the nightmare and bane of first responders in the midwest.

      • We had anhydrous NH3 by the *ton* in massive steel ‘bullets’ for making ammonium phosphate fertilizers at a plant I worked at.

        I walked into a release of it late one night at the plant. It’s only saving grace is that it warns you – the sensation is like someone poured icewater on your eyeballs.

        As I was sprinting away to clear it, I noticed something strange – I had simply stopped breathing until I stopped about 40 yards away. It wasn’t a conscious choice, my brain just told my diaphragm to stop inhaling until I was clear it.

        Lots of ways to die in heavy chemical production plants…

      • And they truck it around the country, 50,000 pounds at a time. Thank goodness that criminals and mass murderers are ignorant and foolish in the extreme.

  13. “Killers Will Find a Way, With or Without Guns”… Now if only the Moron Leftards could fathom that fact,however their agenda gets in the way of truth and facts.

  14. Back in the day I used to help bring their anime to English speakers. Before Crunchyroll became a thing. The work was more boring than I thought it could be and it took a lot of time because perfection is required. Eventually I quit and moved on.

    I wonder what caused this guy to plan out an attack on an anime/cartoon company? The other mass attack to happen in Japan this year was a copycat motivated by American mass murders.

      • The report I read said that they use the term barisaxu (or something similar) as a nickname for a baritone saxophone in a cartoon series. The nutcase had the word as a username on a train spotting website. He was yelling that the stole/copied/plagiarized “it.”

  15. Japan’s Intentional Death Rate (homicides + suicides) is slightly higher that the USA’s. Japan is not a peaceful utopia. Culturally, the Japanese may tend to commit suicide when highly offended, Americans may tend to terminate the offender instead. The end effect is the same.
    The presence or absence of firearms does not really make any difference.

  16. We live in a country with 330 million people who own over 400 million gunms. That makes me smile. I love America.

  17. What is generally overlooked in regards to mass murders in Europe is that most are sponsored by Foreign Governments while those in the U.S. are individuals who are mentally ill. European laws ferret out lone wolf nut cases in the vetting process while in the U.S. anyone, any nut case, any terrorist and any racist can buy a second hand gun with no paperwork. That is the difference.

    I might add its amazing how well the European counties like France and Germany often stop terrorist attacks before they are carried out considering the fact that they are financed and led by Foreign hostile counties. On the other hand in the U.S. due to our almost complete lack of any meaningful gun regulation its almost impossible to stop nut cases from acquiring weapons and carrying out attacks of mass murder. Again it shows the success of European gun laws and anti-terrorist government organizations and the utter failure of our country to deal with gun violence.

    THE ORIGINAL VLAD TEPES

    • Making unsubstantiated assertions and outright lies about the efficacy of gun control in Europe is fun! Lets see what is really going on in Europe.
      “Sweden has a high number of hand grenade attacks compared to neighbouring countries Denmark, Norway and Germany. While gun homicides were on the rise in the 2011-2018 time span, according to a study at Malmö University the number of hand grenade attacks had shown a strong increase in the same period and a total of 116 hand grenade detonations were recorded.” – Paulina Neuding of The Spectator

      THE ORIGINAL VLAD TEPES (Trust me, would I lie to you?)

    • You would be surprised how many terrorist attacks the US has stopped in Europe. And I say this as somebody who worked with foreign intelligence services.

    • “On the other hand in the U.S. due to our almost complete lack of any meaningful gun regulation its almost impossible to stop nut cases from acquiring weapons and carrying out attacks of mass murder.”

      Bite it.

      • I want to go on record stating these murderers are not mentally ill they Are evil Godless individuals they do what their father Satan tells them to do saying they are mentally ill gives them a pass for their wicked deed’s

  18. Good to have current info. Last CDC list I had was 2017, and deaths associated with firearms were 101 on the list, now fallen to 106/7.

  19. I might add its also ridiculous to excuse the 40,000 U.S. gun deaths as insignificant and to be ignored because other types of deaths are either more or less in numbers.

    Gun deaths in US rise to highest level in 20 years, data shows

    Forty thousand people were killed in shootings last year amid a growing number of suicides involving firearms, CDC reveals

    Ed Pilkington in New York

    @edpilkington
    Thu 13 Dec 2018 06.00 GMT Last modified on Wed 5 Jun 2019 09.13 BST
    Shares
    2,022
    gun store
    In 2017, 39,773 people in the US were killed by guns, the CDC says. Photograph: Elaine Thompson/AP
    A steady rise in suicides involving firearms has pushed the rate of gun deaths in the US to its highest rate in more than 20 years, with almost 40,000 people killed in shootings in 2017, according to new figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    The CDC’s Wonder database shows that in 2017, 39,773 people in the US lost their lives at the point of a gun, marking the onward march of firearm fatalities in a country renowned for its lax approach to gun controls. When adjusted for age fluctuations, that represents a total of 12 deaths per 100,000 people – up from 10.1 in 2010 and the highest rate since 1996.

    What that bare statistic represents in terms of human tragedy is most starkly reflected when set alongside those of other countries. According to a recent study from the Jama Network, it compares with rates of 0.2 deaths per 100,000 people in Japan, 0.3 in the UK, 0.9 in Germany and 2.1 in Canada.

    Jama found that just six countries in the world are responsible for more than half of all 250,000 gun deaths a year around the globe. The US is among those six, together with Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela and Guatemala.

    That America is sapped by a continuing epidemic of gun deaths is hardly news. But the new CDC data raises concern that even within that relentlessly consistent story of bloodletting, the carnage continues to worsen.

    While much of the public attention is on the intense tragedies of gun massacres in the US – 2017 saw the deadliest mass shooting by an individual to take place in the country in modern history, when 58 people died in the 1 October rampage on the Las Vegas Strip – in fact most suffering takes place in isolated and lonely incidents that receive scant media coverage.

    Of those, suicide is by far the greatest killer, accounting for about 60% of all gun deaths.

    2018 is worst year on record for gun violence in schools, data shows
    Read more
    Here too the age-adjusted rates are showing an alarming increase. In 2017, the CDC data shows, 6.9 per 100,000 – almost 24,000 people – killed themselves with a gun, up from 6.1 in 2010 and 5.9 in 2000.

    Research by the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence underlines that the tragedy of gun violence and suicides is not spread randomly across the country, but is concentrated precisely in those places where gun ownership is most prevalent and gun laws at their loosest. When the fund analysed the new CDC statistics, it discovered the highest rates of gun suicides occurred in three states which also have the greatest gun ownership – Montana (19.4 gun suicides per 100,000), Wyoming (16.6) and Alaska (16.0).

    Alaska has the highest rate of gun ownership in the US, with 61.7% distribution. Wyoming (53.8%) and Montana (52.3%) are also at the top of the league table.

    The statistics speak to a brutally simple truth. Studies have shownd that suicide attempts often take place in a moment of hopelessness that can last barely minutes – which means that easy access to a firearm can in itself exponentially increase the risk of self-harm.

    “People often think with suicides involving firearms that there’s nothing we can do to prevent this,” said the Education Fund’s policy analyst, Dakota Jablon. “But looking at these numbers it’s clear that simply having a lot of guns around increases the danger.”

    Jablon pointed out that access to a gun in the home increases the odds of suicide more than threefold.

    The CDC data shows that gun homicides account for a smaller proportion of the total of gun deaths, but here too there has been a worrying uptick in the past few years. The CDC figures show that 14,542 people were killed in firearm homicides in 2017, a rate of 4.6 per 100,000 that held steady on the previous year.

    That was up from an equivalent rate of 4.2 in 2015 and 3.6 in 2010.

    THE ORIGINAL VLAD TEPES

    • Not all Vlad Tepes’s are created equal. Some of us are better at cutting and pasting gun control propaganda written by Ed Pilkington, the chief reporter for “The Guardian US”. And some of us are better at just eating the paste.

      THE ORIGINAL VLAD TEPES

    • Japan’s suicide rate is much higher than the US. You must be ok with suicide as long as a gun isn’t involved.

    • You would believe the CDC I bet you bought the lie if like your Dr you can keep your Dr your stupidity knows no bounds

  20. “We can only hope that Japanese authorities focus on the person responsible for this atrocity, unlike in our country where people invariably try to attach blame and attack the rights of millions of their fellow citizens in an effort to press a political agenda.”

    I’m quite sure the Japanese will see justice done to the individual responsible for this atrocity. That said, it’s a simpler task for them as violent crime is much lower there than it is here. When so many “responsible” people carry a firearm one would think there would be no danger at all to life and limb. Unfortunately the statistics say otherwise. Just another damning reason to institute a total ban on guns.

    THE ORIGINAL VLAD TEPES

    • “We can only hope that Japanese authorities focus on the person responsible for this atrocity, unlike in our country where people invariably try to attach blame and attack the rights of millions of their fellow citizens in an effort to press a political agenda.”

      I’m quite sure the Japanese will see justice done to the individual responsible for this atrocity. That said, it’s a simpler task for them as violent crime is much lower there than it is here. When so many “responsible” people carry a firearm one would think there would be reduced danger to life and limb for all law abiding citizens. Fortunately, the statistics say that is the case. Just another reason to fight all restrictions on second amendment rights.

      THE ORIGINAL VLAD TEPES

  21. One of the things that people need to understand about politicians in the US today:

    Most of them are brainless prats. They have credentials, not intellect. Look at how many of these pompous gasbags are Harvard or Yale graduates. Getting a degree from Harvard isn’t difficult. It is getting into Harvard that is difficult. If your mommy wasn’t a Harvard grad, or didn’t put out for a Harvard grad, then you have to have an application that checks all their little boxes – are you of the correct race, did you cheat enough on your exams, were you in the right clubs in high school, etc.

    Once you’re in Harvard, you can smoke dope, show up to class drunk, party all night – and still get an ‘A’ in class. The single most-awarded grade at Harvard is an ‘A’. The graduation rate is 98%.

    At engineering school, the graduation rate was under 50%. They told you to your face that they intended to flunk out half of your freshman class. Most engineering schools today have graduations rates that are between 49 to 65%. Not 98%. Harvard likes to claim that their students are just so capable, that they all graduate. No, that’s not the case – especially with one-third of their classes coming from ‘legacy’ admissions.

    Oh, and in case some Ivy League prat wants to argue the issue of how much of Harvard’s class is legacy admissions:

    https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/07/harvards-freshman-class-is-more-than-one-third-legacy.html

    Harvard, the school from which so many government appointees come? They’re just part of a secret society of elitist perverts. The school admission scandal that caught up so many Hollywood parents shows what a crock these ‘elite’ schools are. If your parents have enough money, they can buy you admission at these ‘elite’ schools. But these are the schools that supply the elected offices, government bureaucracies, powerful private sector companies with so many of their employees.

    Now, it is the nature of elitists that they want the rabble and riff-raff disarmed. Elites who read a couple of books know that the sooner they disarm and contain the riff-raff, the longer that they can stay in power. They view you plebes, you unwashed masses, you declasse’ rubes… with utter and barely disguised contempt. That’s why they don’t want you to have guns. That’s why they regularly ridicule you in the press – the press, by the way, that is also populated with their classmates from elite schools.

    Alas for these elites – they haven’t read quite far enough. Revolutions can happen without guns. The French Revolution happened without guns, for the most part, for example. One of the hard lessons elites need to learn is this: The longer the elites overstay their welcome, the more vicious and painful their comeuppance will be in the end. Need I mention the case of Nicolae Ceaușescu? This was an example of what happens when the elite really overstay their welcome – when they’re starving even their praetorian guard, the guard will turn on them in the end.

    Oh, and by the way: Who was the most vocal critic of how the Ceaușescus were executed? The United States State Department. Elitism on display at the well-deserved deaths of communist thugs.

    • “”””””””””””””””””””Once you’re in Harvard, you can smoke dope, show up to class drunk, party all night – and still get an ‘A’ in class. The single most-awarded grade at Harvard is an ‘A’. The graduation rate is 98%.”””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””

      Maybe things have changed since I graduated in 1974 (not from Harvard) but no one handed any of us students “A”s we had to work our ass off just to get a “B” let alone an “A”

      Your blaming a school rather than understanding the real problem with our government and that is the Founding Father Greed Monger Swamp Rats really fucked us good when they broke with Britain (out of blind greed) because we ended up not with a democracy but with a corrupt Representative Government that only caters and protects the filthy rich. The allowance of Lobbyists makes a complete mockery of the word “democracy” along with the corrupt practices of gerrymandering and the Electoral College (which was instituted to make sure the minority of Slave states stayed that way).

      If the French had kept their god damn noses out of our business (and in the process saved their own government from going bankrupt) The arrogant and totally incompetent George W. would have got his ass beat by the British and they would have hung the no good bastard and today we all would have been living in a democracy and a civilized country. It was the French who beat the British not the rag tag band of untrained hillbillies that Washington led or shall I say directed from way behind enemy lines

      If we had stayed the course with Britain we would have ended up with a Parliamentary Government and true Democracy not a sham corrupt Democracy.

      Canada did just fine by staying the course with the British and today a recent Harvard Study (chuckle) has shown that if you are part of the less well off your chances of moving up the economic ladder in the 21st Century is far greater in Canada than in the corrupt land of Capitalvania. They also now have more affordable education, a superior educational system that assimilates refugee children in less than 2 years, and a superior Socialized Health Care system although they still have work to do on paying for drug prescriptions even though their drugs costs are way lower than ours (because of less Capitalvanian corruption).

      Its interesting to note one of most recent glaring failings of our fucked up system of government is our failure to get anything done in our Government in regards to Global Warming and the destruction of the planet we all live on. The Parliamentary systems of Europe (example Britain) can get things done in a damn good hurry unlike our grid locked fucked up system and the Europeans all have had a “Green Policy” in place for well over a decade while we here in the corrupt land of Capitalvania are still arguing well over 10 years later on what type of Green policy we should adopt. Our country has become a joke and the laughing stock of the civilized world.

      I might add that many of the educated Refugees from South of the Border are now bypassing the corrupt land of Capitalvania and are going to Canada for a better life than they could ever get in Capitalvania. Canada realizes they are an asset to their country while in Capitalvania (the land of the ignorant racist hill jacks) they do not realize that with their aging population they need MORE Refugees not less.

      Quote”””””””””””””””””””””””””Oh, and by the way: Who was the most vocal critic of how the Ceaușescus were executed? The United States State Department. Elitism on display at the well-deserved deaths of communist thugs.”””””””””””””””””””””””””””

      You show your complete ignorance of the man. Yes he was a ruthless murderous dictator but he brought a lot of prosperity to Romania by building up both the civilian industry (example the mfg. of the Dacia automobile) and the export of military hardware , everything from AK 47’s to modern designed tanks. He cashed in on the Vietnam war and along with other East Block small countries they all shipped boat loads of AK 47’s and other military hardware ware to North Vietnam (all paid for by Russia) He was the darling of Richard Nixon (one of your beloved Republican Gods who got 40,000 U.S. Servicemen killed unnecessarily but that’s another long story). The U.S. backed Ceausescu because he was independent of Russia and took no shit from any country. Nixon praised him for playing ball with the U.S. but in all honesty he played the political game with all of the other European Countries including Russia and China.

      And lastly I would have to agree with Harvard’s statement about the quality of its students. Lets face facts the super Rich people do not get rich because they are stupid and they breed and raise superior children, maybe not always moral ones that’s for sure but by and large most are not Morons (Trump being A-typical of the breed).

      Of course I am being overly simplistic because yes there is the fact that Wealthy people have good connections and their kids get jobs other qualified people never get and the wealth they have is turned into more wealth because our corrupt government only protects the rich and fucks the working man who’s wages have stagnated over the last 50 years while the super rich have doubled their wealth. The Trump Tax rape Bill that passed was a glaring example of that type of corruption. Believe me the Capitalvanians are laughing all the way to the bank while the workingman gets stuck paying all the taxes to the Military Industrial Complex that the Rich are heavily invested in. President Eisenhower warned us of the impending doom to America by the Military Industrial Complex but no one took him seriously because there was just to damn much money to be made running America in to bankruptcy.

        • I object, and if I do not get an A in “Revisionist US History” my mommy will have a little talk with the dean.

          THE REAL VLAD TEPES

      • Not sure if that ramble was meant to educate us or motivate instead. I’ll look forward and decide how to handle adversity my own way instead.

  22. The gun control pushed by Liberal Socialist politicians has nothing whatsoever to do with reducing crime and everything to do with disarming to populace so that when people suddenly realize the newly established socialist system the politicians pushed has suddenly driven them into the kind of poverty people lived in inside the USSR before it fell, they will be powerless to resist.

    • Olay. But what would you accuse them of doing? They don’t swear alot and they don’t attack specific posters. They aren’t breaking any rules to my knowledge. Maybe I’m wrong.

    • I will add my voice to the rising chorus of angry crys calling for the banishment of imposter Vlad Tepes, fake Vlad Tepes, Donald Trump Vlad Tepes, the other different Vlad Tepes and the rest of them. Indeed, I have been complaining to management about them and reporting them to the moderator for quite some time now. 97% of TTAG readers agree with me. It is time to put a stop to this nonsense.

      THE REAL VLAD TEPES

    • All I want is a socialist state in place of our democratic disaster of capitalistic ruthlessness. Peace, harmony, and equality for all without the dreaded specter of guns. We have at our door step a brilliant selection of POC’s that can deliver us to a new and better world. Let us welcome them and a more tolerant Vlad Tepes with open arms.

      THE REAL VLAD TEPES

      • Why am I the Vlad Tepes who always has to fix everything?

        All I want is a socialist state in place of our constitutional republic. Slavery, terror and starvation for all without without hope because we confiscated all of the guns. We have at our door step a nauseating selection of POC’s that threaten to deliver us to a frighteningly dystopian new world. Let us defeat them politically if we can, on the battlefield if we must.

        THE REAL VLAD TEPES

    • “I will be the first to call on D.Z. to block vlad, either one, preferably both.”

      When a plant receives no water, nutrients, it dies.

      We have the “Delete” function at our finger tips.

  23. Why bring up Japan when the Happyland Fire, the biggest mass murder in American history, will do just fine?

    Strange.

    • Exactly.

      And perpetrated with far less than a gallon of gasoline.

      When you add any sort of accelerant to a fire trap that violates NFPA codes, you can have a high body count. For example, the “Ghost Ship” fire in Oakland, CA. This didn’t even require accelerant – just monstrous negligence on the part of the Oakland fire chief, the fire code inspectors, you name it. Monstrous negligence and malfeasance. 30+ people dead.

  24. Adding to the “missing” on the cause of deaths list: The abuse and misuse of alcohol kills 2.5 times as many as are killed with guns, and that even includes the suicides. If you take out 2/3rds for the suicides, the ratio jumps to almost FOUR times.

    This is straight from the NIH, quoting a source from the CDC. I’ve kept my eye on this over the years, the numbers are very consistent.

    https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/overview-alcohol-consumption/alcohol-facts-and-statistics

  25. Adding the suicides into gun deaths is unacceptable, misleading and it distorts the statistical value. Someone intent on killing themselves will find a way regardless of method. That’s just statistical ethics or lack thereof.
    We’ve had two shattering examples of mass murder without the use of a Firearm in the last 30 years in this country. The first, the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19th, 1995 in Oklahoma City, OK left 169 dead, and numerous injuries. The second, the Towers of the Word Trade Center on 9/11/2001 killed nearly 3,000 (first responders are still dying of 9/11 related illnesses/diseases) and the Pentagon, with 196 confirmed deaths (it potentially could have bern more severe than the WTC) and the failed attack on the White House (flight 93).
    Those of us that pay attention know that a firearm isn’t necessary or required to commit mass murder. All that’s necessary, is the committment of the perpetrator towards their goal of murder and mayhem. Everything else needed, they can purchase at Walmart or Costco.

  26. Forgive me I did not read all the posts here and I might be rehashing some one else’s. Here I go – I’ve read that vehicle accidents cause more deaths than guns. With that said, should we not be looking at getting vehicles off the road. Of course not. But, based on what some are saying about restricting/eliminating guns is ridiculous. Now, we have a constitutional amendment protecting our rights to bear arms. While driving is a privilege. Just saying. Just think if the bad guys know it’s illegal for you to own a weapon (gun) wouldn’t it make it much easier and more safer to enter your house? I know there is a lot of hurt out there. My sympathy goes out to each and everyone affected by gun violence, vehicle accidents or any premature death. Many of the comments above are so on the money. Some are way off in my opinion. Any way we are have a right to our opinion.

    • “Now, we have a constitutional amendment protecting our rights to bear arms. ”

      Do we? The SC declared (barely) that certain restrictions are permissible, and the rationale for those restrictions are very open to debate (which gun owners generally lose).

      Gun owners do not have a pro-active force behind them; all is defense and delay. The gun grabber mafia has an aggressive agenda, backed by billionaires. Pro-2A supporters are confined to responding to aggression (without any billionaire support). Sometimes, we can stop the anti-gun crazies, but it is rare to get expansive, effective terms while doing so.

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