The Emperor's New Gun

As a true red blooded American I touched my first gun at a very young age. I think I was in maybe first or second grade when I stumbled upon my father's rifles. I was perplexed somewhat as he never hunted or went shooting and I had no idea they existed until that day. Turns out they were his fathers (or something?) I'm not really sure at this point, I only saw them once or twice afterwards. I'm almost positive he hasn't shot them in my lifetime. Unfortunately, that was pretty much it for my experience with guns until I joined the military.

Fast forward a few years (ok, more than a few!) and here I am today owning a whopping one rifle... which I've never even fired. I know what you're thinking because I think it every day. I fail epically at life. And you're right, I do! I don't hunt so I don't have that excuse to shoot, and I guess I'm kind of lazy about it too. I really enjoy shooting, and I'm not bad at it, I just never do it.

With the shooting in Aurora Colorado being used as the latest politically convenient excuse to bolster the schism in America, I figured I needed a new gun. I had actually been thinking I need to get a pistol for a few years, but a well-armed and unnamed cousin of mine allowed my wife to borrow a pistol while I was away and I just haven't really gotten around to actually getting one. Well, I finally got off my butt, grabbed a gun-nut buddy and went out during lunch with only one goal: To get a pistol!

I had looked at a few the day before and I had somewhat of an idea of what I wanted. I ended up getting a Springfield Armory XDM 45ACP Compact 3.8 which means exactly what you think it means. It shoots bullets. It also is not too small and not too large and with the extended magazine with the grip-flush-maker-thing, it is plenty comfortable to hold. If I want to use it for carry purposes, it's not so big that it is uncomfortable or overly conspicuous. Being able to drop the magazine from either side is nice and if I want to add a light to the end, my finger can reach it with ease without changing my grip.

Unfortunately it seems like I won't get to shoot her until I get home from Virginia, but I guess until then I can cut a gun shaped hole into my hardcover copy of A Dance With Dragons and fit it in there!

2nd Amendment

My beloved friends over at Unapologetically American* posted this link today: http://www.ijreview.com/2012/07/10064-un-small-arms-treaty-barack-obamas-backdoor-gun-control-may-pass/

It is absolutely transparent fear-mongering by the far right with little more than paranoid speculation. It makes me want to vomit, as all politics do. However, it touches on a subject that I feel strongly about which is your basic human rights.

The definition of your basic human rights depends entirely on where in the political spectrum the definer sits. I tend to sit pretty dang close to the middle and I would like to take a stab at defining the specific right in question for you.

The right to bear arms is "guaranteed" to us by the Constitution of the United States of America. That sounds nice and dandy, but as the Supreme Court and Congress like to remind us, the Constitution is a living document which means whatever political party controls the aforementioned entities, gets to interpret it, and change it, however they damn well please to suit their political needs.

So what then defines your right to bear arms?

You do.

If you are willing to fight, to bleed, to kill, or to die for that right, then you truly own it and no one can ever take it away from you.

If someone comes to you and tries to take away your gun, you just tell them you'll give them your gun when they pry it...

*I like them on Facebook, so it's the same thing as being friends right? #Semantics

Your "Rights"

I ranted for about an hour on this, but as it was almost entirely expletives, and it is something that I've wanted to write about for a while, I decided to delete it all and attempt to put forth my thoughts a little more... reasonably(?).
The extremists on the right are once again raising the ante in the game of "Which side can I hate more?"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/14/arizona-birth-control-bill-contraception-medical-reasons_n_1344557.html

To summarize the above link for those of you too lazy to read it yourselves, it basically says that the Arizona government will concede that yes, birth control has other uses, but if you want your employer to provide you with insurance that covers it, you must prove to your boss that you are using birth control for a medical reason other than responsible family planning.

So the Republicans, who I was under the impression were pro-small government, want to get all up in my bedroom. Their shining rationalization for such absurdity? Why the First Amendment of course.
It happens to say in relation to this topic:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof"

The second part is the particular section they are lifting up as the bastion of their defense. They claim that forcing an employer, who provides insurance for their employees, to provide it in a secular fashion, would be breaking the free exercise clause of the First Amendment.

At this point I will avoid all other aspects of the conversation that do not directly relate to the above argument in regards to the First Amendment as I have touched on the other parts of it in multiple other posts regarding the issue which you can find in the archive section of this blog. (Over that way I do believe ---------->)
I will just walk down their path of rationalization in an attempt to discover how they are coming to the conclusions they are coming to.

They say that they can't have their money go towards something that is against their religion because...

I'm done.

That is as far as I can get before I stumble face first over the hurdle of common sense. My mind is simply unable to overcome it. When I see a logical fallacy so obvious, I lack the ability to trick myself to just glaze over it.

The very first fault in their logic is the thought that our government should give a flying fractal about their religion in the first place. If you have a problem with your religion, pray about it, go cry to your priest, or whatever your church does. Making a law is counter to what our government's job is. As a matter of fact, I believe if you read the first sentence of the First Amendment of which you hold so dear, it states something to that effect.

You wish to argue that this law wouldn't be respecting "a" religion, but all religious beliefs? Well then what happens when two religions are at odds over a particular belief? Which side does the law take? It seems to me that we've hit a paradox. Also who gets to decide what a religion is? Need I have followers to have my beliefs be considered a religion? How many must I have? Would not the government deciding these things once again be counter to the First Amendment?

Secondly, we as a civilized society already restrict the exercise of religion. If your religious belief requires you to break a law (such as animal sacrifice, illegal drug use, polygamy, etc...) it is already prohibited or strictly monitored. I don't hear you crying foul for any of these other religious beliefs.

Lastly, the blatant irony of course is that the government is not in fact hindering you from exercising your religion. All it is doing is what it is supposed to: providing equal opportunity. Nowhere is the government forcing an individual to take birth control against their religious belief. It is just forcing employers to allow their employees to make their own choice on the matter. If they make the choice, well then the employer must pay what the insurance company requires them to pay, the same as they do for any other drug.

Now, many right wing nutjobs will not see these truths as self evident and will in fact argue until the cows come home that we are stomping all over their "right" to force their religious beliefs on others.
There is only one good way to deal with people like that, and you need only to study American history to discover it works quite well.

I call your First Amendment with my First Amendment, and I raise you my Second Amendment.





[Full aside: I hate it when people string bet, but in cases like the above, it's not poker and it clarifies it better so I have granted myself a temporary waiver to do it.]

The Good Guy... Charged With A Felony???

Quick summary: Joseph Hebert was going around breaking into houses, Dennis Flemming caught him in the act, shot his pistol into the ground and held him until police came. He then turned himself in to the police and was charged with a felony. No, you don't need to read that again, I wrote it correctly and you read it correctly. Dennis Flemming was charged with a felony for stopping a criminal.

The story can be read here: http://www.newhampshire.com/article/20120222/NEWS03/702229948

Upon researching [wikipedia-ing] to see if New Hampshire has a Castle Law, it appears that they kind of sort of maybe do? I don't know. Legalese is too fucking convoluted for me to care. Last I checked our Second Amendment guaranteed us the right to bear arms which is all that matters to me. If you are a criminal and get caught in the act of doing criminal activity, fuck you. How hard is it for our police and law makers to figure out who the good guys are and who the bad guys are? Do we really need to debate this? The guy is a fucking career criminal who is lucky that it was Mr. Fleming who caught him and not me, because I'd have shot him in his criminal face.

I thank FSM every day that I live in a state where I don't have to worry about the legal repercussions of shooting someone who breaks in to my house. (An aside: I seem to recall something about duty to retreat being discussed a couple years ago, I have no idea if it passed and I don't care, I'll still shoot you.)