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Just to be clear, you don’t need a heater to get a cup of coffee, either. Those are the sage words of California assemblyman Anthony Portantino (he might want to explain that burger thing to this gentleman), co-sponsor of AB 144. That’s the pending bill that would take away Californians’ right to open-carry unloaded handguns. The assemblyman doesn’t want to see “Main Street California” turn into the wild west. Yeah, it’s like deja vu all over again. Yet another tired rehash of blood-in-the-streets fear mongering. The antis only have so many bullets in their gun. So to speak. The libs (as in libertarians) at Reason.tv do a nice job of taking this happy crappy down. But this is California. The place where reason and rationality go to die (only because Illinois is all full up.) The vid is worth eight minutes of your life.

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40 COMMENTS

  1. Considering that the supposed legal right to open carry a gun is why the federal courts refused to accept a challenge to the CA CCW laws, why should we oppose this measure? Do not stop your opponent when he is busy shooting himself in the foot.

    • It’s a matter of risk. You can take bad carry laws today or risk everything to get better carry laws tomorrow. Unless you fail. Then you get no carry laws.

    • In other words, let the state become more Tyrannical so that we can fight to make it less Tyrannical? What a bunch of anti-freedom, anti-liberty stupidity!

  2. Excellent video. I think its interesting how the perception of the wild west was that every saloon was one spilled drink away from a giant gun fight, when really the opposite was true. There were about 1-2 murders a year for most towns in the old west. Tombstone one of the towns most people assumed was a hive of scum and villainy only had something like 5 murders in 1881, the same year of the famous shoot out at the OK corral(where there were 3 deaths). That seems to prove that an armed society is a polite society.

    • I came in to say just this. They say they don’t want the wild west but when you look at the numbers and percentages, heck yeah I want the wild west. I would kill for only 5 murders a year in my town.

      I think there were 5 this morning alone. Welcome to Jacksonville; here’s your complimentary fruit basket and murder.

  3. I think (because I don’t live there) that California should do away with open carry when not on private property. Then, the NRA and SAF can sue the state and force them to become shall issue. For that matter, I think all of the “may issue” states should get sued into becoming shall issue. Not that it will happen anytime soon, but it would nice to do away with at least a little of the socio-economic tyranyny, graft and corruption we have in this country.

  4. Those no good COMMIES in the PEOPLES REPUBLIC OF KALIFORNIA SUCK!!! This moron doesn’t want to offend the gun grabbers who fear seeing a gun in public, but he doesn’t care about how the law abiding gun owners feel.

  5. Best quote in the video: “Unless you’re in law or politics the Constitution is very clear: The right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” I LOL’ed…then I cried.

  6. That fat f^ck Portantino looks a lot like Barney Frank.

    I can’t wait for the Big One to get rid of that whole shitty state.

  7. You don’t need a fire extinguisher to make a cheeseburger in your home… so why would you own a fire extinguisher?

    • Exactly, that’s why we have firefighters. So that rather than putting out the fire with in seconds of it starting, we can wait for the fire department to show up after the house is half, or more burned up. Sounds completely logical to me. ;-P

  8. Paternalist nanny-state claptrap. You also don’t need a 60″ TV to watch Rachael Maddow, or a travertine-tiled bathroom to take a dump. I suspect that this assemblyman has both.

  9. I’ve lived in California. Spent plenty of time between San Diego and Los Angeles. Quite frankly, there are plenty of places where you need a gun just to walk across the street.

    And a burger joint or two where you would do well to have body armor and a fire team.

  10. I’m surprised nobody has mentioned the rebuttal to the Democrat’s final statement, which is the SCOTUS case Warren v. DC.

    The Democrat clearly states that he believes that the police are there to “serve and *protect*,” however the Supreme Court has decided that they have no such duty.

    As ever, personal safety is a responsibility of the individual.

  11. Not to mention that part of the reason behind the 2nd amendment was for the times when you need to protect yourself against the police / military / government.

    Call me paranoid, but I don’t like the police / military having more powerful weapons than the rest of the country – it just makes it easier for them to oppress people.

  12. Gossven says: “Excellent video. I think its interesting how the perception of the wild west was that every saloon was one spilled drink away from a giant gun fight, when really the opposite was true. There were about 1-2 murders a year for most towns in the old west. Tombstone one of the towns most people assumed was a hive of scum and villainy only had something like 5 murders in 1881, the same year of the famous shoot out at the OK corral(where there were 3 deaths). That seems to prove that an armed society is a polite society.”

    Someone is pulling your leg. Homicides in Tombstone were far more numerous than you were led to believe. There were at least 10 fatal shootings connected to the OK Corral shooting alone, which was precipitated by a stagecoach robbery in which two people were murdered, while four more were shot dead in the Earps’ vendetta ride following the shootout.

    Tombstone was a bloody town. Check out the list of graves at “Boothill Graveyard” aka City Cemetery in Tombstone, including cause of death, for the years 1878-1883. It’s widely available on the Web.

    Historical revisionists notwithstanding, there was a reason the Old West had developed a reputation for violence long before the motion picture industry existed: It was violent. Hollywood then glamorized the violence, but that’s another story.

    • Someone is pulling your leg. Homicides in Tombstone were far more numerous than you were led to believe.

      I checked out your data, as requested. I counted every homicide, including killings done by indians and LEOs, and I included deaths for which no details at all were provided. I counted 48 homicides over six years 1878-1884. When I divide 48 by 6 I get an average of 8 homicides per year.

      http://www.clantongang.com/oldwest/boothillgraveyard_graves.html

      Tombstone’s population during that period ranged from 7,500 to 14,000. I’ll unrealistically use the lowest population figure for all six years. When I divide 8 by 7,500 I get 0.0011. That’s roughly a one-in-a-thousand chance of being murdered in Tombstone over the period we’re talking about.

      Los Angeles has a murder rate of 12.4 per 100k residents. Divide 12.4 by 100 (so that we’re comparing apples-to-apples, murders per 1,000 residends) and you get 0.124.

      So, in summation, per 1,000 residents we had 0.0011 murders in Tombstone and 0.124 in Los Angeles. And that’s giving your argument every conceivable benefit of the doubt. Which makes modern-day Los Angeles one hundred twenty four times as violent as “wild west” Tombstone.

      It’s math, Magoo. It’s always math. If you’d do some once in a while you might be able to advance a defensible argument.

      • James Felix says: “It’s math, Magoo. It’s always math. If you’d do some once in a while you might be able to advance a defensible argument.”

        The difference between your math and mine is that yours is made up. The gun lobby reminds me of the creationists. When the facts don’t work, invent your own facts.

        • Magoo he just explained where he got his facts, and how he came to the murder rate in tombstone in the early 1880’s vs L.A. today.

          Where did you get yours?

    • Not to belabor the obvious, but 10 is twice as many as 5. I count 79 between 1878 and 1884, which is an average of more than 11 per year… and sort of amazing when you consider the population of Tombstone never exceeded 7500 in those years, and that the one nicknamed “Boot hill” wasn’t the only cemetery.

      In 1881 Tombstone’s population was less than 7000, so 10 homicides yields a rate of 143 per 100k. In 2008, the USA’s homicide rate was 5.4 per 100k.

      • Mea culpa, I was going from memory an article I read a few months back. I almost included the fact that I was off by nearly 100%.

      • I’m not trying to sharpshoot you — the point is that towns like Tombstone were bloody places even by 1880s western standards, let alone modern standards. But unfortunately, a few people in the gun world have been revising history to suit their political agenda… which is exactly the sort of thing Orwell warned us about.

        The leading authority on crime rates in the Old West is Randy Roth at Ohio State. Google those terms and you will get the straight facts without the agenda.

        • Actually, I’m wrong on this one. Fortunately I can use my being wrong to make a point.

          I re-checked my math and it turns out that Tombstone of the time is 5-10 times as violent as modern day L.A. (depending on whom you’re relying for population and number of homicides).

          Because I gave you my rationale for believing what I believed you were able to point out exactly where I was wrong, and as a result I no longer have to go through life believing something that just isn’t true. And because I value actually being right over simply asserting that I’m right this turns out to be a useful experience for me.

          And it’s an experience that you should remember roughly, oh, just about every other time you post.

        • Magoo,

          I’ve Been doing some reading and it seems there is some genuine disagreement between different studies based on failures to account for current medical science saving the majority of people who were shot today that would have succumbed to their wounds in 1800’s.

          Also failure to correct for larger male to female ratio in the “wild west” states.

          Finally failure to correct for a younger population.

          These all scew the numbers.

  13. What a pompous slimy, dissembling downright liar Anthony Porkantino(sp) is.

    The elitist porcine git couldn’t lie straight in bed.

    Maybe he ought to tell the disarmed business owners & residents of London how fortunate they are to be disarmed & how the Police will protect them & their properties (by standing back & doing nothing….).

    I wouldn’t pee on him if he was on fire.

  14. The politician in the video exhibited an abject ignorance about the Bill of Rights and the 2nd Amendment. He said that the 2nd Amendment allows you to defend your PROPERTY.

    I would challenge him (or anyone) to show me where it references defending property OR even yourself. The 2A is not about self-defense in the traditional sense, although logically exercising your right to keep and bear arms enables you to defend yourself, not to mention collectively opposing a tyrannical government.

    Furthermore, the Bill of Rights doesn’t ALLOW us to do anything. The BOR does not GRANT rights, nor does it “give us permission” (to do anything). It acknowledges NATURAL rights of citizens and serves to PREVENT the INFRINGEMENT of those natural rights by the government. The BOR doesn’t grant rights. Rather it restricts the government’s actions.

  15. Interesting idea ’rights’.
    One of my favorite subjects, ( for purely personal reasons of course. )
    A ‘Divinely Inspired’ philosophically-based concept evident of the existence of the quality of Conscience.
    Conscience, definable in part, as a quality with the potential to serve the individual in some circumstances as a restraint upon certain actions and in other circumstances as a calling to act.
    From Conscience, Moral codes of thought and conduct have been derived, and
    as extended to other persons, recognition of ‘rights’ of the individual.
    ‘Rights’ a term implying the otherwise natural status of each person.
    The Moral code of individual conduct simply requires each person to conduct oneself in a manner as to avoid intentionally violating the ‘rights’ of another person or persons.”
    Simple really.

    “Evil is an absence of Conscience, Hell a place devoid of all Reason.”
    Gw.

  16. “Just because one person is comfortable with their weapon doesn’t mean that that gives that person the right to infringe on the rights of other persons who aren’t comfortable.” So sayeth the portly Anthony Portantino, as clearly spoken in the Politicianese language.
    Translation: as a lawmaker, I, uh, we assign, grant, award and afford all rights, and it’s come to my attention that someone’s doing something that isn’t strictly regulated, taxed and there’s no license yet required to do it.
    Obviously this means there’s a legal loophole which makes me, uh, us, well those people uncomfortable and in the interest of comfort, it‘s my duty to enact a law making whatever it is they‘re doing a crime.

    “You don’t need a handgun to order a cheeseburger. You don’t need a handgun to get a cup of coffee.”
    ( Personally, I’ve never thought I needed a handgun to order a cheeseburger or a cup of coffee. At McPistol’s and Handgun King though, I usually order a 1911, a large box of hollow points, a side of cleaning patches and make sure they Super Size the Hoppe’s. )

    BTW, California have any restaurants or ATM’s?
    http://oldnortheast.patch.com/articles/applebees-diner-shoots-mugger

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