UPDATE. Commenter mortimer2000 looks forward to future expressions of "the oppressed minority victimhood of white gun nuts," including the documentary Red Dots on the Prize.
Also a comment at the Voice (yes, they do get a few, despite their ridiculously unwieldy comment technology) reminded me that I hadn't checked Jeff Godlstein on the subject. Here is his reaction:
I hope for [Schultz's] sake — and for the sake of his “anti-gun customers” who are so offended at the sight of others’ weapons that they will protest what is a Constitutionally-protected right — that no nutjob decides to take Joe Biden up on his advice, buy her/himself a shotgun, and go Grande Caramel Macchiato hunting in all these newly-declared gun free zones. The irony would be too tragic to stomach.For me, the clumsily-masked desire to see people who don't completely agree with him slaughtered isn't the saddest aspect of this; it's the fist-squeezing someday-you'll-be-sorry pre-teen rage, and the fact that Godlstein has retained it into middle age and found, apparently, thousands of other emotionally stunted readers to share it with. I wonder what the overlap is between Godlstein readers and Men's Rights crybabies.
Story = poetically. Yes. But change it to "store."
ReplyDeleteThanks, pal.
ReplyDeleteI find " Louisiana State Eep Jeff Thompson" descriptive. Sometimes naught so true as a typo.
ReplyDeleteUgh. I mean thanks.
ReplyDeleteIf Schultz had respectfully requested that patrons leave their tie-dyes and inverted pink triangle buttons at home, or if he had outright banned them, this crowd would have been somewhere between "indifferent" and "on their feet and cheering." But this is apparently one of those cases where private property rights aren't such a great thing.
ReplyDelete"This being Texas, an open-carry-and-then-some state, and the gunman being white, there was nothing the cops could do thereafter but wait for the hail of bullets, but thankfully our hero was in educational rather than mass-murder mode, and collected his order without incident."
ReplyDeleteYour prose is dripping with gems as always, Roy. Swift has got nuthin' on you. Bravo.
Every time I hear a story like this, I flash back on a story I read on a forum a few years back. The subject was a guy discussing - with no shortage of pride - his habit of carrying a firearm through a local farmer's market. He was in full Internet Tough Guy mode, harassing other posters, issuing challenges, and above all boasting about his experiences dealing with people eyeballing the gun guy. Dude seem to have feeling of invulnerability, as though his piece made him as a god walking among men.
ReplyDeleteBut there was a second layer to it. The more he talked with other posters, the more his fear came out. This guy seemed to honestly believe that he went to the farmer's market (in what was not a particularly high-crime area, I might add) without his gun, that he would be killed before he got back home. That feeling of strength was tempered by this terror of some unseen criminal gang that was lurking just out of sight, waiting for him to leave the house unarmed. Think back to the last time you've felt mortal fear - this guy feels that way every time he steps outside.
I imagine that's how it is with the guys who insist on packing heat in a coffee shop. Most people, no matter how timid, do not fear that they are going to die every time they get a cup o' joe. If you do, you either stay home and mess around on the computer, or you roll out like a warlord through the streets of a farming village. Either way, movement conservatives want you to know that you have a home with them.
Anyway, I don't even know why we're discussing this when clearly the problem is video games. Why, if it wasn't for Call of Duty, your neighborhood wouldn't look like...well, like a round of Call of Duty. Fox News tells me this, and I have no reason to doubt them. Fewer fictional guns, more actual guns!
They should make gun owners refer to their guns with stupid Starbucks terminology. Venti-gauge shotguns, anyone?
ReplyDeleteThis guy seemed to honestly believe that he went to the farmer's market (in what was not a particularly high-crime area, I might add) without his gun, that he would be killed before he got back home.
ReplyDeleteYou should have told him it's "kale", not "kill".
The next time the gun nutters organize one of these open-carry extravaganzas, it should be met with a group openly carrying dildos. In fact, we should get the jump on it and start staging some of these events. Then, when business owners eject us and our dildos from their businesses, or even suggest that they'd prefer if we didn't bring our dildos into the store, we can throw a hissy fit and wait for the rightbloggers to patiently point out that the business owners haven't said that WE aren't welcome, it's just our DILDOS that aren't welcome, because they make other customers uncomfortable. And we, in return, can point out that it's not as if we're USING our dildos in crowded public places, but that we just feel better having them with us at all times.
ReplyDeleteWho am I kidding. Even then they wouldn't make the connection. Though it would be amusing to not only be a part of a dildo-wielding mob, but to hear all the cries of outrage about the harm we're causing to "the children" with our dildos.
Maybe the way to get this toned down is to walk into a Starbucks with a big honking .44 Magnum, wearing a t-shirt saying, "Reagan sucks the sweat off a dead man's balls."
ReplyDeleteCowering only seems to encourage them.
A Tom Savini crotch gun would serve the same purpose.
ReplyDeleteI heard a similar story earlier this week. A friend is married to a guy who will not leave the house without his gun - ever. He told her he knows that the one time he goes to the 7-11 without it someone will come in shooting up the place. He refuses to travel a outside the US because he can't be certain of local gun laws and might not be able to have his gun with him at all times (and also because in some places they don't speak English). They live in a near-zero crime area, have never been victims of a crime, and this thirty year-old guy is 6’4” and about 270 pounds of muscle, formidable to say the least.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile his wife, my friend, is the gentlest soul you'll ever meet and goes about 120 pounds soaking wet...yet she's travelled abroad on her own, has broken down numerous times at night and walked miles to get assistance, works in some dodgy areas - and doesn't own or carry a gun.
And she is not afraid.
I hate to break it to the 2nd Amendment enthusiasts, but in the gun debate, it's very clear to everyone who the real "pussies" are.
the cougars for gun control
ReplyDeleteSounds kinda hott, actually...
No, even though the crotch gun is amusing, rightbloggers would be supportive of crotch guns. Dildos would be better. Preferably big, black ones.
ReplyDeleteJackhammer Jesus, s'il vous plait.
ReplyDeleteIf the wingers had anything resembling a spine, not to mention a brain, they wouldn't have been so quick to retreat back to their (maybe in some cases literal) bunkers. Think about it: if they weren't so eager to yell "help! Help! I'm being repressed!" and, now that I think about it, if that weren't their plan from the get-go, they could have bravely soldiered on, busing themselves into Starbucks for years to come despite the cruel bootheel of oppression coming down to stomp their throats, forever. They could equate their cause with that of Martin Luther King, or some shit. It'd be real touching stuff, if it weren't so inevitably funny.
ReplyDeleteIn a conversation a few weeks ago with a co-worker who carries a weapon all the time (concealed, with a permit, usually, though sometimes on his hip), I asked him, why, exactly, does he feel the need to be armed? His response: "because it's my right." Yes, I said, but just having the right to do so doesn't mean you have to. Are you really that afraid all the time? "No. I just carry it because it's my right." And on and on. The ONLY reason he could articulate was "It's my right." Which isn't a reason.
ReplyDeleteSo I pointed out that he as an absolute right to walk around with a 10 inch rubber dick up his butt. Since he has that right, I will from then on assume that he does, in fact, walk around like that. I now assume that about everyone I see with a pistol on their hip.
If Borat taught me nothing else, I learned that a big black dildo can be a formidable weapon.
ReplyDeleteThread winner!!! How can they argue with that? Then again. how could they argue with pet rock. I just don't see it....
ReplyDeleteSo why can't he whip his piece out in your store without having to remember that someone once asked him nicely not to?
ReplyDeleteReally! I mean public masturbation is legal in Sweden, why not here?
Having grown up around gun-owners and hunters; having received sharpshooter qualification during my 9 years of military service; and having even come in runner-up at a junior muzzle-loader competition when I was 12 years old (the first time I ever shot a muzzle loader), I can admit there can be satisfaction and even fun in testing your skill at firing on targets, and I think I know a bit about how these folks "think."
ReplyDeleteMost of 'em are undoubtedly in favor of gun regulation (I mean, ask any of them if they like young men of color to go around packing heat)--they have just been fooled into thinking that they are on a slippery slope to death marches and concentration camps if they blink even once. So, they are forced by their own idiocy and bizarre honor-code (arrogance) to appear to be uncompromising wackadoos, because they can't allow even basic civility to enter into their thoughts or behaviors, or their whole house of cards will come down.
None of this is breaking news, I'm sure, but we really need to find a way to separate the crazy fuckheads who don't know any better (imho a very vocal minority) from the sensible gun owners.
They are absolutely right that part of this is about lifestyle choices, but it is because they have made it that way, and now they are going to suffer the consequences of making it an All of Nothing proposition. Instead of acknowledging that there are serious arguments in favor of firearms regulations, they want to pretend even polite suggestions and requests for decency are no different from public executions.
But... but... dildos aren't even MENTIONED in the konstitut... constitushi... conztit... umm, that thingy with the Second Amendment in it.
ReplyDeleteWe eat what we kale.
ReplyDelete"As a commenter
ReplyDeleteto a related story at Breitbart.com grunted approvingly, "Kind of
weird. Anti-gun liberals are their main customers, sitting around having
their phony, 'intellectual' discussions."
And some things never change.
How about killing them all and letting god sort them out? Just kidding. I actually have a lot of sympathy for these assholes. Except for the liklihood that their negligence will result in 10,000 accidental gun deaths a year.
ReplyDeleteI'm not that sympathetic, and if I never hear the words "gun culture" again, even from Ed Schultz, it'll be too soon.
ReplyDeleteOh, and I did think this one was very funny, if unintentionally: "I'll support small business instead of your corporate dictatorship and
ReplyDeletetake my money to the little locally owned coffee house where they know
me by name."
The mumble mumble after that quote was: "Um, they know me by name because they took out a restraining order against me."
The truly odd thing about this phenomenon is that most of these devotees of the Old Wild West don't seem to recall the history of that period. Most of the towns west of the Mississippi--by post-Civil War days--has instituted a strictly-enforced "no guns inside the city limits" policy, for precisely the same reasons that so disturb commercial enterprise today: there were too goddamned many self-important idiots with guns, and most nominally sentient people had no desire to negotiate a hail of gunfire every time they needed something from the general store.
Now, I would guess that Schultz, a modern corporate CEO if ever there was one, had been looking at sales figures and discovered declining revenues after his rather anodyne submission to the righty-tighty-whities with guns and tried to walk it back a bit, hoping to keep all sides happy, and maybe even keep a little of his newfound armed market share, but, these are not happy people by nature and nothing but abject capitulation to intimidation by firearms would satisfy them.
The focus groups on that marketing issue would be doozies.
Yeah, I'm one of those in the boat with the idea that all personal "recreational" firearms be stored in a convenient facility, where owners can come and check out their hardware (hell, even rpgs) to fire in a defined and regulated firing range (indoor or out). They can get their rocks off doing whatever gets 'em going, then check the weapons back in and come out into the real world.
ReplyDeleteI don't expect that to happen, but it makes a lot of sense.
Well, yeah, I suppose paranoia could be a lifestyle choice....
ReplyDeleteTexas. Also Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, and anywhere real pure 'Murcan language is spoked.
ReplyDeleteThe issue is when they argue with the pet rock and lose.
ReplyDeleteThe Computer Is Your Friend.
ReplyDeleteI like Schultz a lot on labor issues, most social issues, but he went Full Metal Video GameZ!!1! the other day, bleedin' nonsense.
ReplyDeleteHmm. I think this just might explain quite a bit about the cultural fascination with bowlegged cowboys in chaps....
ReplyDeleteIt's so weird. I can understand people who, after five tours in AfPak, can't stop slamming on the brakes because every manhole cover looks like a potential IED, but these people work themselves into this omni-paranoid state by themselves, for no reason other than to inject a little drama and meaning into their lives. It's PTSD without the T.
ReplyDeleteOoooo, that (and B^4's crotch gun) gives me an even better idea....dildoguns! Functional weapons that look like great big black dildos!
ReplyDeleteImagine the confusion this will introduce into the issue! Business owners who want to appease gun nuts will have to allow open-carry dildos; gun nuts who argue against dildoguns can have their arguments in favor of AK-47s and unlimited magazine sizes thrown back at them. "A dildogun is a legitimate self-defense/sporting weapon. There's nothing in the Constitution that says my gun can't look like a dildo! I have a right to own and carry a dildogun!" And etc. Bonus: no one will be able to tell whether it's a run-of-the-mill dildo or a dildogun without handling and closely inspecting it. Not to mention that a dildogun would make a not-so-subtle comment on the fact that for most gun nuts, the guns function primarily as penis-extenders anyway.
The wingnut romance with Starbucks was the shortest-lived in history. Going from "Starbucks Appreciation Day" to "their corporate coffee sucks" in about a nanosecond.
ReplyDeleteThat's probably true. There's been a spike in crazy fuckhead behavior, and a lot of it seems to stem from the NRA and their paymasters. One way to sell a product with a relatively small customer base is to convince those customers that the product will soon be gone. This latest wave of paranoid has been very profitable for some people, and I do not believe that this is a coincidence.
ReplyDeleteIt's magical thinking.
ReplyDeleteI have a little blue glass charm hanging from the rear view mirror of my car - it keeps the Evil Eye away. And you know what? I haven't had anything bad happen. So it must work. Knock wood.
These guys' guns are their magical rabbits feet - only the difference between theirs and mine is that if a three-year old child is attracted to my little blue glass charm, it's not going to "go off" and kill him.
These people are as superstitious as illiterate medieval peasants.
There was a recent story online where a reporter decided to carry a loaded gun with her at all times for a month, just to see what it was like. She wrote that the unexpected by-product of the experiment was that she became incredibly fearful, worried that at any moment she'd be confronted with a need for the gun. It was almost as if the gun itself caused her to fear what she might encounter every day. Between that and being vigilant about gun safety around her home, she said it was incredibly stressful.
ReplyDeleteWhat was interesting was when she reported this, how many commenters wrote in to excoriate her for this show-off "stunt" and actually criticized her for endangering her family by bringing a gun into her home without being properly trained.....and yet they were pro-concealed carry advocates.
"Properly trained" is another piece of bullshit from these folks. Obsessive gun-owners are some of the least likely to be responsible, in my experience, because they soak in a culture of gun-ownership and just assume that everybody knows the rules, well...all the boys, anyway.
ReplyDeleteBecause of this, they are very, very, dangerously, idiotically, should-be-criminally negligent about keeping loaded firearms lying about to be mishandled.
Maybe "sensible gun owners", of which I know a few, could separate their ownselves from the wackaloons. It's like with "sensible" evangelicals and libertarians wanting to be taken seriously without having to answer for their own goobers or even listen to criticism. Tired of doing these lazy bastards' work for them.
ReplyDeleteI was hoping the blogger had actually changed his name to Godlstein, but in any event, his efforts have brought me closer to g-d.
ReplyDeleteI had to buy a gun because my neighbor had a pair of chow mixes that kept mauling and killing my livestock. He left before I had to use it, and now I'm stuck with a pistol i don't want. I don't want to sell it because I'm afraid the schmuck i sell it to will injure or kill someone with it (although as big a piece of shit as this gun is, it's more likely to explode in his hand and occasion years of reconstructive surgery.
ReplyDeleteA few days agoI drove by the pawn shop where I bought it, and they had a beautiful black Ibanez semi-accoustic guitar in the window. Looked like an old Gretsch.
It made me think there ought to be a guitars for guns swap program.
Faster than a speeding bullet, you could say.
ReplyDeleteHis inability--if that's what it is--to appreciate your question is pretty striking. You'd think it would be striking to him, too. "You have the right to shave your hair off and paint your head blue--why don't you do that?" Subtle it isn't.
ReplyDeleteOf course, in the end he could say, "Because I like it," and you'd be hard pressed to get him to go anywhere beyond that, even with good intentions on his part. Whatever the fundamental beliefs of these people are, "Know Thyself" isn't one of them. Au contraire.
Talking Points Memo regularly reports on accidental gun deaths, particularly those involving kids; there's also this interesting proposition.
ReplyDeleteOkay, but--dildos aside (a phrase I've been waiting my whole life to use), what if we all appeared in public with toy guns prominently displayed? Or would it touch too many nerves in concealed carriers and lead to tears? Somebody find out.
ReplyDelete"Proper training" is their Kevlar fig leaf; it's their cognitively dissonant excuse for the actions of better-armed-than-emotionally-adjusted gunslingers, as if paying some money for going to a firing range and having an ex-cop correct your stance is going to weed out the misfits. In truth, since they don't want any restrictions for the carrying of guns, training doesn't really enter into their fantasy. It's as fake as their pretending that they're anti-abortion because they want to spare women the trauma.
ReplyDelete--which raises the issue, as it has before, of: Why doesn't someone create an NRA for sane people? That really IS a hobbyist group, and neither an industry lobby in hobbyist drag, nor an even-crazier gang of frothing fundamentalists? What do you get for your membership anyway, besides that sticker--i.e., that sticker that lumps you in with repellent apologists, morons, and industrial flacks?
ReplyDeleteAn interesting attempt to weld his surrogate penis gun fetish and his anti-intellectual inferiority complex together into one unwieldy, but revealing, lump of neuroses.
ReplyDeleteThen again, it's probably not good to mix guns and ideas. That's how we got duels. And wars.
I talked with a retired SWAT cop recently, who told me they had lobbied for and received permission to spend 1 hour each morning of their shift doing target practice, and thanks to that their department had a much lower than average mistaken shooting record. Of course now he is so crippled with carpal tunnel syndrome from all that shooting that he was forced into early retirement, but this is what "proper training" looks like. The gun-clingers aren't practicing that much, except perhaps in front of the mirror while parroting lines from Taxi Driver.
ReplyDeleteAmen. Do we really want the emotionally- and mentally-precarious to be technically better and more lethal?
ReplyDeleteEspecially without magazine restrictions?
Well, there is a group that has formed, but it's for people who think the NRA has gone soft. NAGR - National Association for Gun Rights.
ReplyDeleteI think they are somewhat involved in the northeastern Colorado secessionist movement, but they've been rather quiet since they got hit by catastrophic flooding recently. I suspect they'll wait until they've gotten all the FEMA money they can and had the feds and the state pay to fix all the destroyed bridges before that shit comes up again.
everybody knows you're a Death Leopard, paleo, we're just waiting for the right time to use the information
ReplyDeleteSorry if my search for this point didn't find it already made, but Goldberg's got something seriously wrong: Biden's advice was about home and presumably business self defense, not about shooting-up places.
ReplyDeleteThis is both incorrect and unfair: as far as he's concerned, confusing legitimate self-defence with mass murder is _our_ job. I'm calling my union rep..
"Dildos Aside" Now that's the name for a rock band
ReplyDeleteIn honor of Starbucks' continued support of the 1st Amendment, my buddies and I are starting an appreciation day where we all stand by the pick-up desk and yell our our favorite classic porn titles when someone gets their order. After all, it's our right - use it or lose it - and I'm sure Starbucks will appreciate the extra sales.
ReplyDeleteI know--that's why I mentioned frothing fundamentalists. The sane one could be called the American Rifle Association--or, better yet, the Really American Rifle Assoc.
ReplyDeletePoor Jeff. Cockslapped by the invisible penis of the market.
ReplyDeleteI see what you did there.
ReplyDeleteAn hour? Each morning? My hands hurt just thinking about it.
ReplyDeleteThe "I Heart Guns & Coffee" graphic makes me think of the Pogues in Straight To Hell.
ReplyDeleteYour happiness is our primary concern and mandatory.
ReplyDeleteHappiness is a warm....uh, yeah.
ReplyDelete"Most of the towns west of the Mississippi--by post-Civil War days--had
ReplyDeleteinstituted a strictly-enforced "no guns inside the city limits" policy,
for precisely the same reasons ... there were too goddamned many self-important idiots with guns,
and most nominally sentient people had no desire to negotiate a hail of
gunfire every time they needed something from the general store"
Yes, they imagine themselves as Kirk Douglas or Henry Fonda at the OK Corral shootout -- not realizing that the Clantons were shot down precisely because they'd ignored the Tombstone city ordinance about turning in your guns when you came to town.
Sorry, I just got a mental image of a Chow attacking and killing a cow. I'm going to assume that the livestock you were referring to were chickens.
ReplyDeleteFuck, I'm a two-time mugging victim. I just keep my eyes peeled a little wider now if I'm in an iffy situation, which I realize I'm usually not. Mr. Stopping Power needs to grow a pair.
ReplyDeleteBusiness opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming.
ReplyDelete----------------------
http://homeownershandymanservice.com/virginia/handyman-services-in-alexandria-va
"it's the
ReplyDeletefist-squeezing someday-you'll-be-sorry pre-teen rage, and the fact that
Godlstein has retained it into middle age and found, apparently,
thousands of other emotionally stunted readers to share it with"
He know the audience.
Ah yes, the "sensible gun owners" who leave loaded and cocked pistols around as a form of birth control.
ReplyDeleteYeah, those "sensible gun owners"
Are you kidding? You're not aware of all the recent "accidents" at firing ranges?
ReplyDeleteYou were planning to fucking murder your neighbor's dogs? Because they are being dogs? Or are planning to shoot the owner?
ReplyDeleteEver think of taking responsibility for the safety of your livestock? A fence, maybe? An enclosure? A freakin barn?
So you have a problem, and the first thing you think of is "Who can I shoot?"
And then the answer comes, like a theif in the night: 'You know, I bet I could get away with shooting his dogs!'
And then you will have killed something, and you will be a man.
A guy like you should stick to solid body guitars.
I have, in fact had chickens killed by dogs. I don't blame the dog, I blame myself for not adequately protecting my chickens.
ReplyDeleteDon't get in a hurry, pal. It's already taken, and we are litigious as hell!
ReplyDeleteProperly trained? Gun training? Is that when they tell you how many times you should suspect your wife of infidelity before you shoot her? Is that when they tell the exact amount of money you must lose before you pull a gun on the guy who owes you? Is that when they tell you how depressed your adolescent kids need to be before you put the loaded guns away? Or is that where they tell you just how closely somebody should cut you off on the road before you stop and shoot each other?
ReplyDeleteGun training, my freakin butt. Do they teach you how to recognize your own schizophrenia?
Gun training isn't about firing the gun, it's about knowing when to fire it, and uh, at who.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, typical policeman, sucking a lifetime of disability payments out of us after a career ruining the lives of lesser people. Pigs! I can't stand them.
After 9-11 they found work for every goddam snitch, bully, suck-up and sadist in the US.
So tell me those 3 and 4 year olds who shot their younger competotion (thew 2 yr. old) were able to chamber a round, and pull back the trigger with their three year old fingers? No, those guns were loaded, and cocked! There's your sensible, trained, gun owner. He's always ready for a race war, or alien invasion.
ReplyDeleteOh jeez, sorry about that! I had no way of knowing we would both turn up here, and hey, a guy's gotta make a living!
ReplyDeleteBetter yet, a t-shirt with the Mapplethorpe whip-in-butt photo on it, photoshopped to have Reagan's face.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny you describe this scenario because it's EXACTLY how he thinks. I didn't mention that he's always telling her not to worry, that he'll protect her from bad guys with his gun. And she just says to him "I'm not worried about bad guys."
ReplyDelete