I didn’t want to spend the first day of the new year crabbing about something. So I waited until the second day of the new year. However, it seems lots of stuff I might crab about today is basically old stuff. For example, the wingnuts are blaming President Obama because Cubans have no civil rights. Apparently they did until late last year. Who knew?
In the last days of the old year we shifted from toddlers blowing away themselves and each other to toddlers killing their mothers. These stories make me sad in ways I can’t even describe.
But the husband of the woman recently shot in the head while shopping at Wal-Mart, by her two-year-old who had found a firearm in her purse, isn’t angry at the NRA. He’s not angry at the manufacturer of the purse that was designed for concealed carry. He’s only angry because some people are politicizing his wife’s death.
But if some of us had done a better job of “politicizing,” his wife might be alive now. Likewise the Oklahoma mother who was killed by her toddler while changing her infant’s diaper.
Apparently the Idaho mother, by all accounts an intelligent person, wouldn’t leave her home without a sidearm. Why? Crime statistics for Blackfoot, Idaho, suggest that her chances of being a victim of violent crime during a daytime trip to a Wal-mart were only slightly larger than being smashed by a falling space station.
And speaking of odds, we actually do not know how often children accidentally shoot someone. And the rate of accidental gun deaths among children is likely higher than officially reported. There is data going way back that keeping a loaded gun at home is a particular danger for children. Doesn’t seem to ever matter, though, does it?
To conservatives, the entire Bill of Rights consists of the 2nd Amendment – sans the “militia” part, of course!
Gun ownership is a self-imposed “Death Panel” for stupid people.
If I didn’t need a gun when I was a bartender and bouncer in the Alphabet Jungle, Lower East Side, and East Village of NY City back in the late 70’s and early-mid 80’s, then you could probably do without one in your little town of Sibling-Schtupp and its obligatory Walmart.
Btw- GREAT line about the space station, maha!
ROFLMAO!!!!!!!!!!
the Idaho mother, by all accounts an intelligent person, wouldn’t leave her home without a sidearm
Whoa, self-fulfilling prophecy: she did indeed die by gun violence.
Sadly, some of these individuals are Darwin Award nominees, imo.
Color me skeptical, but the Oklahoma diaper change shooting has a feel to the story that there’s more to it than meets the eye.
Guns kill more Americans than Ebola. Who would have thought ?
cund: you mean, sans the “well-regulated” part.
That, too!
The mom might still be alive if she lived elsewhere. I live in a reddish-purple state and yet, even though we had concealed carry forced on us by the NRA terrorized legislature, most businesses have “no weapons” policies. Customers demand it and I’m sure insurance companies strongly recommend it (I wouldn’t want to be that Walmart owner). Why don’t these gun idiots take a clue from their annual medical exams, where, after asking about your alcohol consumption, smoking habits, and seat belt use, your doc asks you about guns in the house? Personally, I don’t let my kids INTO any house where I know there are guns….
If I didn’t need a gun when I was a bartender and bouncer in the Alphabet Jungle, Lower East Side, and East Village of NY City back in the late 70’s and early-mid 80’s, then you could probably do without one in your little town of Sibling-Schtupp and its obligatory Walmart.
Yes, I was thinking something similar. Well, I’ve never been a bouncer, but I was going to say that I’ve never even fired a gun, nor have I ever carried any kind of weapon, and I’ve managed to survive 45 years so far. Either some people are paranoid or I’ve been extremely lucky.
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Stephen:
I got you beat. I have been resident on this planet for 66 years, and never, in that time, have I been in a situation where a gun would have done me any good.
I suppose that there might come a time when my second-to-the-last thought would be “gee, I wish I had a gun” — but the odds are 42 to one against.
And by the way — even the NRA’s safety requirements are store a gun unloaded, no round in the chamber, safeties on.