A lot of the rest are committed by juveniles, or mentally unstable people, who show up at health care town halls wearing loaded weapons while screeching NO TO NI**ERCARE.

Megan sez, “The men in the readership, at least, could be fairly confident of their ability to stab their spouse to death whenever she says something really awful.”

I don’t even have a spouse, but after reading that drivel I’m sure as shit ready to start stabbing “someone”. Repeatedly.

McMegan misses the point, as usual. The exercise of the Second Amendment at a “public forum” defeats the purpose of the forum and prevents the exercise of the First Amendment. As Carole King said:

You can’t talk to a man
With a shotgun (or AK-47) in his hand

Geez, I wonder if she jabbers like this during sex? That apres cocktail party cleanup jump start is looking even more brutal.

Haven’t thought about this issue since Meghan Cox Gurdon was a regular here.

Or force the people who do it off the premises and into a park eight blocks away?

You mean maybe something like First Amendment Zones?

McMegan misses the point, as usual.

well, that is her job after all, and she does it well!

What’s a “fatal weapon”? Is it anything like a deadly weapon? Is English McAddled’s second language?

A lot of the rest are committed by juveniles, or mentally unstable people

Drunk or drugged people are, almost by definition, “mentally unstable,” and because their future status as drunk or drugged is not taken into account, they can legally own guns. Just a thought. And mental illness might sometime arrive unannounced at a later point of a legal gun-owner’s life.

All that aside, the real point is, as cobernicus points out, that people strutting around with guns tends to have an intimidating effect on the surrounding discourse.

Fifth. After batshit stupidity, straight-up disingenuous crap, talking-out-of-her ass, and craved depraved moral barrenness.

Fucking bitch. You can’t tell me she doesn’t know that women die every day (usually by gun) at the hands of their husbands/boyfriends. I hate that ‘anything can kill’ bullshit because it’s a straw man argument. You can have a knife and use it for something other than killing. You can have a pencil and use it to right, rather than stab someone in the eye. You can drive your car to the store rather than run someone over in a rage. With a gun, the express purpose is to kill. Or, if you want to be generous, to hurt someone/ something seriously. Give me a fucking break. I still can’t believe this woman is only two years younger than I.

There is no reason for her to be considered anything other than a joke.

I’m just fascinated that Megan appears to have felt seriously tempted to run someone over with her car or “grab a knife from the rack in the kitchen and brandish it at them”, or “put rat poison in their morning coffee,” or “take an exacto blade to their throat while asleep.” These are some pretty fuckin’ violent and detailed fantasies. She shouldn’t let her brain just hang open like that.

while I understand your sentiment (entirely), I would assume from its application you are a resident of an urban environment. Guns can be used to hunt, or for sport shooting. This is not an ad for the NRA, lots of people in the rural area I live in use them in this way. That does not mean we go “strapped” to public forums, that’s for Urban Overweight Survivalist Wannabe Losers (TM). That’s why I support a ban on ALL handguns (pistols are for shooting other people, and sport shooters can shoot long guns just as competitively) and a ban on ALL semi or fully automatic long guns (that would ban anything other than a bolt action rifle, and even ban pump shotguns). After all, it’s a bit harder to mow down a whole crowded classroom when you have to break open the shotgun every 3rd shot or pop the bolt and manually reload the rifle EVERY SHOT … but its no harder to hunt or sport shoot.

No shit. And assumes we all have those same detailed homicidal fantasies. And thinks this is perfectly normal, and not a cause to be seeking professional psychiatric counseling.

An exacto knife in the first act always cuts someone’s thumb in the third act while she’s making a scale model of Guantanamo. In her rage she then slits her sleeping husband’s throat.

Stupid concert venues. They think it’s easier to handle security if they even prevent attendees from bringing in umbrellas. Why don’t they understand that everyone would be more polite and safe if everyone brought a handgun? They should give discounts to armed ticket buyers.

In fact, wouldn’t we be even safer if everyone carried life grenades? The politeness would be overwhelming.

Now asiangrrl, let’s be fair. There are many everyday uses for that .44 magnum Megan keeps inside her One Tree Hill pillow case, not to mention how it helped fill up her trust fund coffers. You know, when Daddy McArdle, with his Cosa Nostra business partners, was shaking down elected officials in abandoned wear houses in Hell’s Kitchen by placing a little cold blue steel in their mouthes. That’s good business! And profitable! It’s a tool, like a calculator.

And how about when Megan feels the spiked heel on her Jimmy Choo’s is too long. POW! Shoot off the tip, and voila, you are ready for church!

McAddled is immensely improved by the use of the Cut Up Machine at Language is a Virus:

A certainly a things than are because real do ban hand, it weapons Secret On a for that protest do do into of have a the people make the Should the their to is Zengerle constantly have hand, carrying are Protesting their harder for Service–almost weapons one certainly openly watched the protesters of harder other for on the crowd for a weapons at job. Their much the Secret certainly Zengerle point their job. The eight into into off movements. Secret park be the ban other Should because the do guy guy to openly Zengerle who job. Point guy force constantly.

That’s why I threw the ’something’ in there. Ok, you got me with the sport shooting thing, but shooting animals is still shooting to kill or to hurt, which I am not saying I’m against, but that is the main point of most guns–to kill something/someone.

By the way, I completely agree with a ban on handguns and assault rifles while permitting hunting rifles/sporting rifles, but then again, I am a DDFH (Doubly-Dirty Fucking Hippie), so what the fuck do I know.

Hatmandu, your last line made me laugh out loud. Thank you for that. Any time I can laugh at MM, it makes my life just a bit brighter.

P.S. Sorry. It sounds like I’m pissed at you, and I’m not. I am in agreement with you–it’s just teh stupidity of MM that burns so bad.

Although guns can effectively kill people and animals, McAddled proved with geometric logic that a
duplicate key to the icebox existed carrying a gun is no more consequential than driving a Toyota.

And then there’s this:

A gun collection provided no protection and in fact prompted the murder of an elderly Bartlett man Friday night, according to authorities.

The DuPage County Sheriff’s Office announced today the arrest of two men who allegedly murdered the man during a burglary to steal his guns.

Carl Kuhn, 82, was found smothered in his home on the 29W400 block of Schick Road in unincorporated Bartlett. His obituary in the Chicago Tribune says Kuhn was a gun-rights advocate and former officer of the Illinois State Rifle Association. He was also a criminal defense lawyer with an office in Glen Ellyn.

Under arrest for Kuhn’s murder are Terry Bratcher, 43, of the 3N500 block of Route 59 in West Chicago, and Keith Allen, 21, of the 10000 block of South LaSalle in Chicago.

Authorities say the suspects knew Kuhn was an avid gun collector and they targeted him specifically to steal his firearms.

Link

Well, to be fair again to McCurdle, there was that famous Johnny Cash song…

“I exacto-ed a man in Reno just to watch him say, ouch!”

Or something like that. Also. As well.

Hypothetically, for the sake of argument only, I COULD strangle McCurdle with my hands, so does that mean they should take away my exacto knives?

Once again McMegan is simply pulling numbers out of her ass. According to the Department of Justice, only 14% of murders are committed by strangers, while 15% were committed by spouses or family and 1/3 by acquaintances. The relationship was unknown in 1/3 of the cases. I think the default assumption from now on is that anytime she uses numbers, she is lying.

Squeaky Fromme is going to be so happy at today’s changes the next time she goes to a Republican speech!

It’s great that glibs live in a world where a fire arm in never, ever, evar! stolen or wrestled away from a wholesome whitey “by people with criminal records, i.e. people who probably cannot legally own a gun… [or] by juveniles, or mentally unstable people, who also cannot legally own a gun.”

I wonder if the thieves pried one of his guns from his cold, dead fingers. Gun-rights advocates are always talking about that.

Monty Python did it first (and better):

Who amongst us can not say that they have not had the urge to set fire to a great public building at one time or another?

Sorry, can’t remember which episode/character, but that was intentional humor…

A friend was the patient advocate (attorney) for a state mental hospital in Oklahoma, who loved his job and worked very hard to protect the rights and interests of his clients. This is a maximum security facility for the seriously disturbed. One day one of the patients walked off the campus, got a gun, came back on campus, walked into my friend’s office, and shot him dead. Do not fucking tell me we do not need stricter gun control laws (and I own a gun) and increased enforcement.

ugh. so much wrong with her post. as others said, the violent fantasies are troubling. also, does she really believe that if i went and got up in the face of a gun toter and started screaming insults with out getting physically violent, they wouldn’t pull their gun on me?

I can’t fucking take this anymore. The whole teabagger/gun-packing movement is like a six-year-old in the back seat of the car pointing his finger one inch from his little sister’s face, saying “I’m not TOUCHING you!”

And if McMegan were the mom driving, she’d be giving a stern lecture to the little sister about how she shouldn’t assume things.

I remember a scene in “All In The Family” where Gloria tells Archie how many people were killed by guns in the past year; he replies, “Would it make you feel any better, Little Girl, if they were pushed out of a window?”

It’s a valid point, give him that; but if shit is going to happen, having a gun handy is more likely to make it lethal.

And I, too, am a gun owner.

Giving her the benefit of doubt, don’t criminal associates count as acquaintances?

Cross tabs on the DOJ statistics don’t go into whether the family member was engaging in other criminal activity than murder.

Look at gun ownership statistics on the other hand – over 250,000,000 privately owned firerms, and on the order of 31,000 gun related deaths. Any given firearm is pretty unlikely to cause a death, let alone be used to commit homicide.

I have no problem with anyone bringing their black powder muzzle loaders to these meetings. Any other gun, however, should not be allowed as they were not in existance when the amendment was written, IMHO.

Or take an exacto blade to their throat while asleep?

With a bit anatomical knowledge, you can get results with an x-acto knife as long as it’s sharp, though it tends to get a bit messy, especially in bed.
I prefer stuffing the head in a woodworking vise and cranking it down, it’s much better for satisfying rage.

But that’s just me >_

McMurderMe: “[…] violent criminals are not like the rest of us. They have very poor impulse control […]“

You missed that a gun can be used for target practice, which is to say “to practice killing things.”

First of all, as it shows in the articles I linked earlier, something like 90% of homicides are committed by people with criminal records

Are those numbers right? And how many gun deaths are ruled accidents? Dick Cheney shooting his friend in the face was ruled an accident? a drunken accident? the other guy’s fault?

It’s not her brain she’s pulling this stuff out of…

just sayin’

Shorter:

Criminals are a cowardly, superstitious lot.
- – B. Wayne

i.e. people who probably cannot legally own a gun

Didn’t the Bush administration fight to keep straw buyers names out of a government data base? In other words the GOP is protecting the rights of gun nuts to sell guns to criminals. That and the gun companies profits..

We’d need to read the fine articles, assess their credibility and methodology to know whether her “something like 90% of homicides are committed by people with criminal records” stat is accurate.

I’ve not read the articles she cites. There are also some confounding issues to consider.

Someone convicted of say, illegally removing catalytic converters from cars has a prior conviction and has lost his or her right to possess a firearm. If their SO cheats on them, they take their SO’s firearm and murders them and their lover in the act, that’s hardly the picture McMegan wants us to think of with that stat. She’s counting on “criminal record” being conflated with “convicted of a violent crime”.

Actually it’s worse, as criminal record may mean charged with a crime, not convicted of a crime.

Thanks for saving me the trouble of tracking that down at BJS, Dr. Dick.

To all the concealed carry advocates who insist that Columbine, Virginia Tech and any number of other horrors wouldn’t have happened (or wouldn’t have been as bad) if only concealed carry of handguns was permissible everywhere:

Do you suppose there is a reason for all LEO (that’s Law Enforcement Officials) to be wearing uniforms that scream, “I’m a good guy” whenever SWAT-like squads are out?

Do you suppose that in a situation like Columbine or Virginia Tech it might be a little difficult to distinguish between perpetrators carrying guns and innocent citizens carrying guns?

Do you suppose that the gun-carrying citizens might just pull out their guns and shoot someone they just saw shooting another person (oh, say the actual perpetrator)?

Do you suppose that having loaded handguns around and easily available just might be a less-than-wonderful idea?

Actually, there isn’t a point in reading the articles. They’re bullshyte in raw form. The Bureau of Justice Statistics tracks this stuff carefully. We are at much greater risk from our friends and loved ones than we are from strangers. This is a very uncomfortable fact for most people, so it gets shoved under the rug.

Why the fuck would anyone give McMegan the benefit of the doubt when she routinely just pulls numbers out of her ass. Even the most generous reading of the actual data does not come close to supporting her claims.

Google “son daughter shoots father mother” and see how many stories come up. You will be shocked…

Too bad Labor Day celebration cancellation; Tea Baggers with guns. What could go wrong?

http://jacksonville.com/commun….._after_lea

Going back through her posts I found this as her source for the “something like 90% of homicides are committed by people with criminal records” statistic. It isn’t particularly credible, it’s an editorial written after the shootings in Oakland last April which cites vague newspaper studies.

HHS tracks this stuff too.

I do find the fact of 250,000,000 private firearms/31,000 gun related deaths lends some credence to the notion that most firearm owners do not have human blood on their hands.

Among all murders of women across the country in 2000—the most recent yearly statistics available from the U.S. Department of Justice—more than 33 percent were killed by an intimate partner.

http://www.now.org/issues/viol…..gnant.html

By McMegan’s logic birth control then should be mandatory until the would be mom can prove none of her intimate partners are nuts. I wonder if relatives of intimate partners and friends are included in these numbers ie honor killings.

True but of the number of gun owners who did kill people just how many listen to and or gave money to right wingers?

I am pro gun just not pro crazy people having guns.

I liked Bill Maher’s suggestion…

Arrange for a large number of armed people dressed up like Moslems to show up at one of these townhall meetings…

…think the NRA and the wingnuts are gonna support that?

I’m confused. Is this translated from the German? This sounds like one of Eva Braun’s little diary entries about living at Berchtesgaden when those nasty men from the “woopie sphincter” club would come for the weekend and talk about the crowd control issues and get excited about the blood and stuff. Gotta go now. They don’t let us hear the part about schmeckies and rail road cars to Poland. Ooo… kinky kaiser jokes, time to run

The whole teabagger/gun-packing movement is like a six-year-old in the back seat of the car pointing his finger one inch from his little sister’s face, saying “I’m not TOUCHING you!”

This.

I seem to remember an incident from…last Christmas? where two lawfully gun-toting citizens got into an altercation at a cash register in a toy store and started shooting at each other.

One of them “just put his hand NEAR” the weapon, “just to make the other guy back off” (I can just see it, can’t you?), and the other person thought they were actually going to be shot, and got out his own gun and the guy who was trying to make him back off thought HE was really in mortal danger, so he started firing. I’m only vaguely remembering, but it seems to me there was actually a chase, almost a running gun battle, inside the store.

And did the altercation start between the two wives of the men involved? I seem to remember that, too.

With bunches of people all carrying guns, the least provocation or misunderstanding can result in people thinking their lives are in danger from one of those other gun-carrying people, and then the shooting starts.

De nada, amigo. Somebody has to fact check this cretin, since her editor won’t.

Then Megan needs to be very careful when visiting her parents. Isn’t her dad a rage-aholic?

You know, thinking about weapons it seems to me that Megan’s brain is the knife at the proverbial gunfight.

Stolen privately owned hand guns are also the primary source of guns held by criminals. Nobody is suggesting that all or even most gun owners are killers, just that having a gun in the house is as likely to get you killed as to protect you. Nobody really keeps statistics on self defense, but the DoJ reports exactly 100 justifiable homicides by civilians 1976-2005 compared to over 100,000 homicides committed by family members or significant others. That suggest that you are 1000 times as likely to get killed by a gun in your house as to protect yourself with it.

FWIW both BTC and I are gun owners.

I’ve never heard of her or read about her anywhere but here. I just looked at her blog. If she wants to make it to Fox news she needs to dial back the boring, and turn up the outrage.

Fact check?

Republicans have heard of that?

They have never even heard of “facts”.

The biggest problem with America’s stupidest pundit arguments in this case is a complete and elementary misunderstanding of probability and selection bias. Even if we give her the benefit of the doubt that she didn’t pull that 90% number out of her posterior, she assumes that people who bring guns to a public rally against their political opponent are a random and representative sample of the population of legal gun owners. (She also fully neglects to take into account the possibility that initial legal gun ownership might give people more opportunities to commit crimes/commit more serious crimes further eroding any shred of credibility to her argument). Moreover, you virtually have prima facie evidence that people who bring guns to political rallies aren’t representative in that even in states where you have a substantial numbers of gun owners, very few people in general (of the total population) go to a rally against the opposition party and very very few bring their guns with them. That means the few people who bring guns to rallies are extremely unlikely to be representative of law-abiding, legal owners of guns as a whole as there is clearly two steps of non-random selection (attending rally against political opposition and bring a gun along to same) going on. One might also add that it looks like she is referring to gun-related crime and not murder or attempted-murder. That is, this is not a situation where you might expect armed robbery or a mugging or a home invasion so including those crimes in the percentage may dilute the relative proportion of legal to illegal gun owners as perpetrators. Finally, one need also mention that at least one of the people carrying a legally-owned gun was also carrying a sign quoting a phrase alluding to assassinations in the name of liberty and another had a preacher who prayed for Obama’s death making at least two of these yahoos even more highly unrepresentative of 1) legal gun owners in general 2) political rally attenders 3) legal gun owners attending political rallies.

To be clear, these arguments to not suggest that anyone who brings a legally owned gun to a rally is very likely to use them – just that any conclusion that they are unlikely to use them based on the evidence she uses is completely unwarranted. As an exercise to the reader, what is the likelihood that the proportion of previous presidential assassins (successful and unsuccessful) who legally owned their weapons exceeds McBungle’s implied 10% (or even lower as she also suggests that crimes conducted by minors and the mentally unstable be removed) threshold of crimes committed by legal gun owners. People who see no reason to be concerned about the presence of guns at Obama’s events coupled with the views (expressed verbally or textually) by those with the guns are either of extremely low IQ, legally brain dead, utterly craven, mindlessly contrarian, or secretly wouldn’t mind if one of these guys follow through on their implicit threat. Perhaps in the case of America’s Stupidest Pundit, all of the above.

“How often, after a fight with someone, have you been seriously tempted to run them over with your car? Or grab a knife from the rack in the kitchen and brandish it at them? Put rat poison in their morning coffee? Or take an exacto blade to their throat while asleep?”

Actually, never. That McArdle has entertained these violent fantasies speaks volumes about her psyche.

McArdle is a psychotic McMoron.

I can only say that the absolute lack of scientific data on these topics because the NRa has blocked the use of Federal and State databases, info from emergency rooms on firearms injuries, etc. is suggestive that they have something to hide. They are always eager to cite self-collected statistics on “times that a firearm was used to stop a crime” but never indicate whether these are crimes like kids trespassing, petty theft, a psychological benefit (”the punks know I have a gun so they don’t bother me”) or even cases where a perpetrator asserts he intimidated someone else (”she cut me off so I flashed my gun”).

These studies never report how many acts of intimidation by firearms on law-abiding people have occurred- even when brandishing such might be “legal”…situations where arguments are “decided” when one party pulls out a gun. Or where the husband simply goes and gets the pistol.

Now we have cases where these folks are bringing weapons to things like these town-halls. Presumably they could argue that these uses also “prevented a crime” (i.e. “I would have been assaulted I bet”). Throw in the cases of suicide, murder, assault etc. from those that legally have their weapons b/c previous incidents were never reported by the victims, they got away with it, or the NRa simply has created so many loopholes (gun show exemption, mail exemption, etc.) that anyone can get a weapon.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12…..7guns.html

Actually she said people who bring guns to rallys are stupid at best.

That’s being very kind to them. It seems likely that at some point there will be a Secret Service sniper given the order to fire because of some “innocent” move by a stupid person carrying a gun to a rally. Dead stupid person, gun nuts even more riled up… not a pretty picture.

Her writing on guns is on par with the rest of her writing and she deserves the Americas Stupidest Blogger sobriquet.

Exactly…neither Fromm nor Sarah Jane Goode had themselves committed a crime…so supposedly their fine with the firearms in a public place overtly brandishing near the President. Until they actually discharge the weapon according to Mc”Guns of May” they were breaking no law. In fact they were, presumably, reducing the liklihood of crime. So when the off-duty police officer wrestled her to the ground when he saw the gun pulled that guy was violating her rights and instead of being acclaimed a “hero” he should have been charged with assault.

BTW…the gun never went off. It misfired. So no crime was committed according to the brain-dead right wingers.

“Actually she said people who bring guns to rallys are stupid at best.”

But not criminals. But I wonder if they realize that the snipers on the rooftops likely have them redy for double-tapping if the barrel of their weapon even is pointed in the general direction of the President. Sadly these idiots likely make a tough job nearly impossible. The Secret Service likely has to direct the movement of the President and other officials away from these nuts.

Ultimately they will drive politicians out of the public sphere entirely…which suppose is their aim.

Ultimately they will drive politicians out of the public sphere entirely…which suppose is their aim.

Only the Democratic ones.

This is an act of silencing, or attempted silencing. Their goal is silencing all liberal/progressive voices in the public sphere. They do this in a variety of ways, including accusing the media of “liberal bias”, and this is just the most egregious.

Hypothetically, I could stab her with one of my knitting needles.
I don’t intend to do it, though.

She’s a blithering idjit, truly.

and also to Gasman @ 61: violent fantasies published for all the world to see, and yet she could go out and legally buy a gun tomorrow. So much for “mentally unstable people, who also cannot legally own a gun”

The goal could be to change the subject from health insurance reform to gun control. That is a nice safe topic for them to give us with the current SCOTUS.

His analysis of murder is entirely incorrect. For one thing, ninety-percent of crimes are not committed by those with criminal records. I don’t even know the actual number and I can tell you that’s false.

Secondly, it’s very difficult to shoot people if you do not have a gun. Therefore, ipso facto, anyone who carries a gun is immensely more likely to shoot people- in fact, I’d say it’s a requirement.

Thirdly, most people who murder aren’t abnormal at all- true “sociopathy” or other mental disorders count for less than half of all people found insane in legal trials, which only counts for about twenty percent of all murders…. in other words, ten percent. Most people who murder are, in fact, pretty normal people, mentally speaking. Usually they kill because they grow so angry at something that they do it without thinking.

Fourthly, and finally, violent criminals are, for the most part, like you or I. Impulse control has nothing to do with it- some violent criminals are very controlled people. It’s a combination of bad luck, terrible environment, harshness, etc. (But of course, we all know that when he says “violent criminals”, he really means “black people”.)

He actually does have a point about the availability of lethal weaponry- in fact, that’s one reason why barbecue tongs are such a prominent weapon during the summer. People get mad, stab each other with whatever’s handy. But… none of these weapons have the killing power of a gun. Guns are weapons. It’s what they’re designed to do.

….This man is a moron.

It occurs to me that if all available secret service snipers are focused on the obvious wingers with their handpenis or rifledick hanging at their sides, a truly focused and intent assassin has a much better chance of being successful simply because the eyes of the protectors are too busy keeping a close eye on the aggressively displaying nutjobs. And then it occurs to me that maybe that is the point of their whole exercise of their “right to carry so EAT IT LIBS” BS.

And all the while, Fux Spews keeps giving them more airtime, which has to really do something for that winger ego; better than Vi*gra no doubt.

Megan writes in a publication w/ national circulation:

You have access to fatal weapons every day. How often, after a fight with someone, have you been seriously tempted to run them over with your car? Or grab a knife from the rack in the kitchen and brandish it at them? Put rat poison in their morning coffee? Or take an exacto blade to their throat while asleep? The men in the readership, at least, could be fairly confident of their ability to stab their spouse to death whenever she says something really awful. Yet none of you have done it. Virtually no one else has done it, either, except for people who were already clearly deeply troubled–either abusive, or mentally ill. That’s why not a lot of hunters report getting into disputes with their friends or family that suddenly, unexpectedly, and tragically, turn violent.

Is someone who thinks about these things too mentally ill to own firearms?

Try not to think about it too much….

You have access to fatal weapons every day. How often, after a fight with someone, have you been seriously tempted to run them over with your car? Or grab a knife from the rack in the kitchen and brandish it at them? Put rat poison in their morning coffee? Or take an exacto blade to their throat while asleep? The men in the readership, at least, could be fairly confident of their ability to stab their spouse to death whenever she says something really awful. Yet none of you have done it.

In my family, what usually happened was someone would fall on a knife someone else just happened to be holding….

Paisan!