Tom Toles for May 06, 2014

Useful, safe, gun. Pick two.

Nothing is safer than using your brain. Why don’t you make sure the law enforcement, federal and state, use it first and see how they like it.

So you believe in YOUR freedom to carry a gun, but not MY freedom to carry the gun of MY choice? Once again we see the bankruptcy of the NRA and its sheeple!

And if you have concealed carry, what’s the problem? Forget your watch? You CERTAINLY don’t forget your gun!

Nothing safe about “smart guns”: every time a gun dealer agrees to sell them, he is attacked and threatened with death. Nothing safe about that. Liberty! Freedom! Let the market decide! Everybody believes in these things, except when they don’t. We are all in favor of individual rights, until the individual wants to do something we don’t like, such as marry someone of the same sex, or have an abortion, or go around armed to the teeth in public, THEN we talk about leaving it to the people, not the courts, to decide. Ah, but when the people, through their representatives, decide to permit or forbid something in a way WE don’t like, then they run to the courts to overturn the law. It is all just politics, folks, “a strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.” But when it come to this, individuals threatened with violence ordeath as a means to stop legislation, that is not politics, that is terrorism in it basic form: using fear / terror to get your way when the laws and the courts are against you. I’m almost surprised that this tactic has not been used against the other great bugbear of right radicals, “Obamacare.” When they discovered that they could not have their way with the ACA, they could have just started threatening violence against anyone who shopped for his insurance in an ACA marketplace, or against those who sold policies there or counseled people on the way the marketplaces worked. I guess the thing that prevented that was that there were just too many people to threaten.

The NRA is scared that a safe gun that recognizes it’s owner will make standard-issue assault weapons socially unacceptable. There is no rational basis for their opposition, yet they won anyway.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/05/03/maryland-gun-dealer-drops-plans-to-sell-smart-guns-after-backlash/http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/threats-against-maryland-gun-dealer-raise-doubts-about-future-of-smart-guns/2014/05/02/8a4f7482-d227-11e3-9e25-188ebe1fa93b_story.html

An entrepreneur creates a new product for which there is a demonstrated demand: if the product is bad idea, if it doesn’t work, people won’t buy it. So you think this is a loony liberal idea? Fine! Since when in America are only conservative-approved inventions permitted to be sold? The point here is that a small minority are using threats and intimidation to prevent the marketing of a product, doing their best to ruin the people who have invested in creating and selling this product. I have heard many people say, “If you don’t like guns, don’t buy one.” Others say, “Don’t tell me what kind of gun I can or cannot buy or sell.” And now death threats and intimidation are bring used to prevent the selling of “smart guns.” Let’s hear it, defenders of freedom! Which side are you on?

It’s the one that doesn’t actually fire bullets.

Gotta love the NRA’s hypocrisy. No wonder the GOP is so tightly aligned with the NRA, birds of a feather.

The “smart gun” is a design responding to a request from POLICE some time ago to come up with a design that would prevent officers from being shot with their own weapons if overpowered in a confrontation. Several potential designs, like print recognition and biometrics, have been looked at, but technology can’t always meet demand, on demand.

The current design indeed may not be perfect, but it IS intended to meet the demands of POLICE! The contention that it would also be useful for limiting use of weapons potentially stolen from our military arsenals? Hmm, maybe, maybe not, the troops are already packing over 70 pounds of armor and equipment that mean “infantry” troops need some kind of mechanical transport, cause the human body DOES have limits!

The company manufacturing the so-called “smart guns” is Armatrix. Since announcing the (theoretical) availability of the guns, the company has had many inquiries and requests to purchase their product, but they are finding it extremely difficult to find gun dealers to offer their guns for sale, and of course they can’t sell their products directly through the mail, but they are required to sell them through licensed dealers. But the dealers are afraid to carry them. When retailers in California (the Oak Tree Gun Club, near L.A.) and Maryland (Engage Armament in Rockville) agree to carry the weapons, they were flooded with attacks and called everything from Communists to traitors. The Oak Tree Gun Club immediately reneged on their agreement with Amratrix. The proprietor of Engage Armaments said he strongly believed that people should be able to buy any kind of gun they want and determined to offer the guns in spite of complaints, but when anonymous callers told him that his store would be burned down if he offered Armatrix products, he backed down.

“What about Knives? A teen stabs several fellow Students with 2 Butcher Knives. Defend this” What are you talking about? I am talking about the freedom of people to buy “smart guns” if that is what they want, and the freedom of gun dealers to sell them without being threatened. Personally I would prefer to own a “dumb gun” than a “smart gun” because I tend to prefer low-tech. But if a woman want to carry a gun in her purse that cannot be used against her if her purse is snatched, or cannot be discharged by her six-year-old, they why should she be stopped from doing so?

Can “infringement” be the public refusal to buy something run head on into wild claims that it would have sold except that somebody did something to make it not sell?

“The more guns there are owned in America, the lower our crime rates and numbers get.”, This fable has been repeatedly disproved. Increasing or decreasing the total number of guns by 20% has no significant effect on the crime rate. Crime rates have been falling for the last 30 years at about equal rates in places that have loosened the gun laws and in those where they have been greatly tightened. Neither the anti-gun lobby nor the pro-gun lobby are correct in the views that more (or fewer) guns has an effect on the crime rate. Although all countries with a LOT fewer guns have a much lower rate of homicide and violent crime. And there are other countries with lots of guns that have crime rates much higher than ours. But in both cases, that may be putting the cart before the horse: less violent people own fewer weapons, more violent people own more weapons. The key factor is the people and a culture that values human life more or less, and believes in the legitimacy of violence as a means to an end, rather than the availability of weapons.

I don’t need your pitiful 6" phallic devices. I have two swords. My wife has a cutlass and a sword. (And I have a mace & chain, which can shred armor.)And for all you people who like to quote Heinlein to justify your guns:“A properly balanced sword is the most versatile weapon for close quarters ever devised. Pistols and guns are all offense, no defense; close on him fast and a man with a gun can’t shoot, he has to stop you before you reach him. Close on a man carrying a blade and you’ll be spitted like a roast pigeon…” Glory Road, p200, hardcover edition

The “smart gun”? Is that the one that does an instantaneous background check and only fires if the target isn’t a member of the NRA?