Target issues statement respectfully requesting that Ammosexuals leave their weapons at home.

Courtesy of A Bullseye View:

The leadership team has been weighing a complex issue, and I want to be sure everyone understands our thoughts and ultimate decision. 

As you’ve likely seen in the media, there has been a debate about whether guests in communities that permit “open carry” should be allowed to bring firearms into Target stores. Our approach has always been to follow local laws, and of course, we will continue to do so. But starting today we will also respectfully request that guests not bring firearms to Target – even in communities where it is permitted by law. 

We’ve listened carefully to the nuances of this debate and respect the protected rights of everyone involved. In return, we are asking for help in fulfilling our goal to create an atmosphere that is safe and inviting for our guests and team members. 

This is a complicated issue, but it boils down to a simple belief: Bringing firearms to Target creates an environment that is at odds with the family-friendly shopping and work experience we strive to create.

So now following in the footsteps of the Sonic and Chipotle restaurants Target is forced to make a request that they should never have had to formerly make.

Reasonable Americans would never have put any of these businesses in the position of having to ask them to do something that seems perfectly obvious to the majority of us.

I cannot quite wrap my mind around what the Open Carry protesters hoped to accomplish, but there is very little doubt that what they have accomplished is not helping their cause in the slightest.

CNN buckles under pressure from gun nuts, reduces number of school shootings by 80% in report.

Courtesy of Think Progress:

When students are killed, injured, or put in harm’s way on school grounds, when does it “count” as a school shooting? Not all of the time, according to a number of right-wing commentators — and CNN. 

In a news report published Thursday, CNN amends its prior reporting that there were 74 school shootings since the Newtown Massacre — a number calculated by gun violence prevention group Everytown for Gun Safety — and concludes that there have instead been just 15. 

“CNN determined that 15 of the incidents Everytown included were situations similar to the violence in Oregon — a minor or adult actively shooting inside or near a school,” the article explains. Except for the times when those criteria don’t apply: “Some of the other incidents on Everytown’s list included personal arguments, accidents and alleged gang activities and drug deals,” the article explains, apparently nixing Everytown’s bright line criteria that encompassed all incidents “when a firearm was discharged inside a school building or on school or campus grounds, as documented in publicly reported news accounts” in exchange for its own subjective assessment. 

Among those incidents not included was a brawl that escalated outside a college basketball game at Chicago State University, a shooting at a Mississippi town’s football game that left a 15-year-old dead, and a Georgia college that saw two shootings in two days. As Everytown points out in response to CNN, these discounted shootings led to 25 deaths and 45 injuries. They included familiar scenes of students hiding under desks and running for cover. And many of them were characterized by CNN as “school shootings” at the time of the incidents.

Apparently, as Gawker points out, what changed CNN's mind about what constitutes a "school shooting" was the twitter attack by one lone 2nd Amendment supporter, and the Right Wing news outlets that supported him: 

The drumbeat of news about gun violence in the United States is so steady and rhythmic these days that it’s starting to fade into the background. Another week, another school shooting. One of the biggest risks now is of a population-wide numbness, eroding the will to tackle the crisis. So perhaps we should be grimly grateful whenever the gun lobby demonstrates that it retains the power to horrify. 

Case in point: this sequence of tweets by the conservative journalist Charles C Johnson, featured on Glenn Beck’s website The Blaze and on Hot Air, and being forwarded enthusiastically everywhere among pro-gun tweeters and bloggers. (I found it via Quinn Norton.) 

Johnson takes it upon himself to debunk the claim, made by the gun reform group Everytown for Gun Safety, backed by Michael Bloomberg, that there have been 74 school shootings since Adam Lanza killed 20 children, six adults and himself at Sandy Hook elementary School 18 months ago. In fact, Johnson concludes, there have only been seven. How does he manage this feat of mathematical magic? Simple: by narrowing the definition of “school shooting” so far that almost none of them count.

I read through the tweets and the articles that they linked to, and to be fair the guy had a point about a small number of the shootings. And that number was one.

The rest were injuries, murders, and suicides, all the result of a gun fired on school grounds.

In other words due to a school shooting.

Hey I totally get it. If I was trying to defend lax gun laws, and there was this much data to suggest the need for a change, I might be tempted to undermine the findings as well.

Besides as we all know the Right Wing simply does not like facts, because they never seem to benefit their side.

However these are not simply facts, these are preventable deaths. And a news organization fudging the number of gun deaths in order to protect the Right Wing's favorite constitutional amendment and their delicate feelings is unconscionable and demonstrates a lack of journalistic ethics.

Man walks around children's baseball game scaring children with his gun, and it's all completely legal.

Courtesy of WSBTV:  

Parents at a Forysth County park abruptly stopped a children's baseball game after growing suspicions of the behavior of a man carrying a gun in a waist holster Tuesday night. 

"He's just walking around [saying] 'See my gun? Look, I got a gun and there's nothing you can do about it.' He knew he was frightening people. He knew exactly what he was doing," said parent Karen Rabb. 

Rabb told Channel 2’s Tom Regan the parents grew so alarmed that they brought the game to a halt when the man declined a request that he leave a parking lot overlooking the baseball field. 

“He scared people to the point where we stopped the game, took the kids out of the dugout and behind the dugout, and kind of hunkered down,” Rabb said. 

Park users flooded 911 with 22 calls about the man. Forysth County deputies questioned the man, and found that he had a permit for the handgun. Authorities said since the man made no verbal threats or gestures, they could neither arrest him nor ask him to leave the park. 

Another parent questioned what point the man was trying to prove. 

"Why would anyone be walking around a public park, with a lot of children and parents and people here playing baseball, and he's walking around with a gun? I don't think the parents would have been nervous had he just had the gun in his holster and was just watching the game," said parent Paris Horton.

Why would anybody be walking around a crowded baseball field and frightening people by openly carrying a gun?

Because he can. And if the NRA gets their way, there will be a whole lot more of this kid of incident too.

Welcome to the America, where gun rights take precedent over a child's right to feel safe while playing baseball.

The one year anniversary of the Sandy hook school shootings is almost upon us so one 2nd Amendment group is planning a national event to celebrate gun rights.

Courtesy of Komo News:

A Seattle-area group is planning a national event to celebrate gun rights on Dec. 14th, the anniversary of the mass shooting at a Connecticut-area school. 

"Guns Save Lives Day" will take place in all 50 states, said a representative for the Bellevue-based Second Amendment Foundation, although what the day entails is still to be determined. 

Gun advocates are planning the event to coincide with the anniversary of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, which killed 26 people, mostly children. 

"The gunman lived in my neighborhood. He lived 50 yards from my front door," said Po Murray, a Newtown mother with two kids who were once Sandy Hook students. "For them to use that day to promote their agenda, it's completely inappropriate in my opinion." 

Event organizers say they fear gun control advocates will use the day to push their beliefs so they want to counter that; to "show America that there is a good side to guns." 

"We are certainly aware that it's going to hit a raw nerve with a lot of people," said Dave Workman, with the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, a co-sponsor of the event. "I think that possibly is one of the reasons we chose the day -- to make sure that people understand that, while what happened last year was a horrible tragedy, there are many good things people do with firearms." 

 "My Facebook lit up on it. It's sadness, more than anything else," said Ralph Fascitelli with Washington Cease Fire, a gun control advocacy group. "Is there no line of common decency?" 

No there isn't.

At least not for those who believe that the 2nd Amendment is the MOST important right given to us by the Constitution.

Insensitive pricks!

These people may represent our last hope of passing serious gun control legislation in this country. 60 Minutes interviews the families of Newtown.

Personally I don't know how ANYBODY could be unmoved by the testimony of these families, and with them now focusing on reaching out to the Washington politicians there is some hope that the NRA may not have the same ability to purchase the votes that they need to block legislation as they have in years past.

(Part two can be found here.)

Study finds that most mass shootings target women and families, and are perpetrated by men with legally purchased weapons.

Courtesy of Alternet:

A new analysis of 56 mass shootings across America since 2009 finds women and family members are the most frequent victims, and that the shooter almost always acquired his guns legally, in cases where the gun source is known. 

“In at least 32 of the cases (57 percent), the shooter killed a current or former spouse or intimate partner or other family member, and at least eight of those shooters had a prior domestic violence charge,” the Mayors Against Illegal Guns report on mass shootings said, suggesting that the problem of gun violence is far more related to violence against women in homes than rampages in public settings such as schools and theaters. 

The study also found that in the cases where the source of the guns was known, almost all were acquired legally: only two examples were given of mass killings with a stolen or illegal gun. That finding runs counter to the gun lobby’s oft-cited rhetoric that only criminals abuse guns. 

“We had sufficient evidence to judge whether the shooter was a prohibited gun possessor in 42 of the 56 incidents,” the report said, referring to laws barring ex-felons, mentally ill people, drug addicts and other categories of people from owning guns. “Of those 42 incidents, 15 (36 percent) involved a prohibited possessor and 27 (64 percent) did not.”

You know personally I already knew this to be true but it is good to see it backed up with data.

Now the only question is can we get it out to the public at large, and help to change the debate that has for too long been shaped by the NRA and other 2nd Amendment fetishists?

After a reprieve of 150 years it looks like the Civil War is heating back up.

Courtesy of Salon:  

You can’t boil one of the most tumultuous periods of American history down to one paragraph, but here goes: Lincoln was assassinated by a domestic terrorist and replaced by Andrew Johnson, who was an incompetent hothead and an unapologetic racist. Within a few years the ambitious project of Reconstruction fell victim to a sustained insurgency led by the Ku Klux Klan and similar white militia groups. By the late 1870s white supremacist “Redeemers” controlled most local and state governments in the South, and by the 1890s Southern blacks had been disenfranchised and thrust into subservience positions by Jim Crow laws that were only slightly preferable to slavery. 

So even though it’s a truism of American public discourse that the Civil War never ended, it’s also literally true. We’re still reaping the whirlwind from that long-ago conflict, and now we face a new Civil War, one focused on divisive political issues of the 21st century – most notably the rights and liberties of women and LGBT people – but rooted in toxic rhetoric and ideas inherited from the 19th century. 

We’ve just emerged from a presidential campaign that exposed how hardened our political and cultural divide has become, and how poorly the two sides understand each other. Part of the Republican problem, in an election that party thought it would win easily, was that those who felt a visceral disgust toward both the idea and the reality of President Barack Obama simply could not believe that they didn’t represent a majority. As many Republicans are now aware, the party now faces an existential crisis. It’s all very well to go on TV and talk about attracting Latinos and downplaying cultural wedge issues. But the activist core of the Republican Party is neo-Confederate, whether it thinks of itself that way or not. It isn’t interested in common cause with Mexicans or turning down the moral thermostat. Just ask Rick Santorum: What it wants is war.

You know when we first started talking about this, in the run up to the election, I think a lot of people were fairly skeptical that things could deteriorate badly enough that we might actually have concerns of another civil war erupting.  I would imagine that a number of those skeptics have had second thoughts as they have watched how entrenched the Southern Republicans have become in Congress, the reaction of some conservatives to the shooting in Newtown, and the emotional meltdown that we observed after President Obama was reelected.

It is interesting that this article talks a great deal about the movie "Lincoln," because when I was watching the movie all I could think about is that if I were sitting in a theater in Mississippi or Alabama, I am pretty sure the mood inside the theater would have been significantly different. And I somehow doubt that on THOSE movie houses the audience rose from their seats at then end, as they did in Anchorage, and clapped their hands as the credits rolled.

No somehow I believe THEIR reaction was something else entirely.

At this point I am not convinced that there will be an actual exchange of gunfire between the two ideological sides, however I will point out that the rather startling increase in gun sales is certainly NOT so that these yahoos cans shoot more tin cans off of fence posts.

And with President Obama discussing placing limitations on access to those guns, you can almost smell the fuse being lit on this powder keg right now.

Seen at a recent Mississippi gun show.

Yep, I think that is a fair representation of the average customer at a place like that.

I just heard Chris Hayes say on his MSNBC show "Up with Chris Hayes,"  that statistics show that while there are more and more guns being purchased, they are being purchased by fewer and fewer Americans. That means there is an ever dwindling population of people in this country, with an every growing arsenal of weaponry.

And I would say the majority of them look much like that guy in the photograph.

Gonna be a LONG four years!

Okay it may only be a parody now, but you KNOW this is the ultimate aim of the NRA. Don't you?

You know there have been a number of Onion articles which have turned out to be eerily prescient.

If things keep going this way, pretty soon there will be no room for parody.

Israeli spokesman: Wayne LaPierre lied about our country and gun control on Meet the Press.

Courtesy of New York Daily News:  

Appearing on “Meet the Press” on Sunday, NRA honcho LaPierre said: “Israel had a whole lot of school shootings, until they did one thing. They said we’re going to stop it and they put armed security in every school and they have not had a problem since then.” 

But Yigal Palmor, spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, said the situation in Israel was “fundamentally different” from that in the United States. 

“We didn’t have a series of school shootings, and they had nothing to do with the issue at hand in the United States. We had to deal with terrorism,” said Palmor. 

“What removed the danger was not the armed guards but an overall anti-terror policy and anti-terror operations which brought street terrorism down to nearly zero over a number of years,” he said. “It would be better not to drag Israel into what is an internal American discussion,” he added. 

“There is no comparison between maniacs with psychological problems opening fire at random to kill innocent people and trained terrorists trying to murder Israeli children,” said Reuven Berko, a retired Israeli Army colonel and senior police officer. 

In recent years, restrictions on gun ownership in Israel have been tightened, not relaxed. 

“Israeli citizens are not allowed to carry guns unless they are serving in the army or working in security-related jobs that require them to use a weapon,” said Berko. 

You know it is like the Right Wing and NRA don't understand that we live in a global community where information can be shared very quickly and lies are only minutes or days away from being revealed. 

Well just in case during your Christmas festivities today you have a gun nut in the family, now you have actual facts to combat those completely fabricated talking points.

Final thought for the night.

MAD magazine reveals the unabridged NRA statement from last Tuesday. Update: NRA President's speech today!

If image does not enlarge click here

You know the sad part is that this, though written by a humor magazine, is probably not at all far from the truth. In fact I would say that it is most likely spot on.

Later today, in just a half an hour or so in fact, the NRA is going to release a NEW statement. Get ready for the obfuscation and redirection, because you KNOW it's coming.

By the way you may be interested to learn that gun deaths are just about to surpass traffic deaths by the year 2015:

A disturbing new study by Bloomberg finds that by 2015, the number of people killed by guns in the US will likely surpass the number of people killed in traffic accidents. It would be a first. Vehicle deaths are on the decline (down 22% between 2005 and 2010), but gun deaths have been increasing since hitting a low in 2000. By 2015, shooting fatalities are expected to be at nearly 33,000, while traffic fatalities will be around 32,000. 

In 10 states, gun deaths were already outpacing traffic deaths in 2009, Slate reports. Those states range from Michigan, which had a high of 1,095 gun deaths compared to 977 motor vehicle deaths, to Alaska, which had a low of 104 gun deaths compared to 84 motor vehicle deaths. 

Do you want to guess at how many of those deaths by way of a bullet were considered a legitimate use of force to protect property or life? I think we all know the answer to that.

Update:  Wayne LaPierre just said that the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is to have a good guy with a gun.  He just literally demanded that the President allow his organization to put trained gunmen into our public schools to protect our children, this is beyond insane!

Update 2: Here is the transcript from Wayne LaPierre's speech, he is the President of the NRA. You are going to have to read it to believe it.

Here is one disgusting portion:

We care about our president, so we protect him with armed Secret Service agents. Members of Congress work in offices surrounded by Capitol Police officers. Yet, when it comes to our most beloved, innocent, and vulnerable members of the American family, our children, we as a society leave them every day utterly defenseless, and the monsters and the predators of the world know it, and exploit it.

By the way if you want to see one of those monsters that LaPierre is talking about here is a picture of one. ANYBODY who uses a tragedy like this to insist on more lax gun laws around our public schools and demands that gunmen be allowed to walk around among our children as a deterrent to the crimes made possible by HIS lobbyists constant watering down of our gun laws, is the very definition of a monster.

Update 3: Do you remember that post I wrote on December 8th, about the fact that the NRA loves mass shootings because they frighten people into buying more guns?

Remember how some people thought that was an exaggeration?

Check out this portion of La Pierre's unbelievable speech this morning: 

Right now today every school in the United States should plan meetings with parents, school administrators, teachers, local authorities and draw upon every resource that’s out there and available to erect a cordon of protection around our kids right now. 

Every school is gonna have a different solution based on its own unique situation. Every school in America needs to immediately identify, dedicate and deploy the resources necessary to put these security forces in place, though, right now. 

And the National Rifle Association, as America’s preeminent trainer of law enforcement and security personnel for the past 50 years -- we have 11,000 police training instructors in the NRA -- is ready, willing and uniquely qualified to help.

Still think it was an exaggeration? 

Proof that Concealed Carry permit holders live in a dream world.

Courtesy of the YouTube site:

The controlled study documented in these videos show that concealed carry permit holders are fooling themselves if they think they will be able to react effectively to armed aggressors. Most CCW holders won't even be able to un-holster their gun. They will more likely be killed themselves or kill innocent bystanders than stop the aggressor. For more details, see "Unintended Consequences: Pro-Handgun Experts Prove That Handguns Are a Dangerous Choice for Self-Defense.

This is longish, coming in at a little less than ten minutes (And this is just part one), but it is well worth your time and something that you can Facebook and tweet to all of your pro-gun relatives and friends that might just give them a few facts to chew on for a change.

Yesterday it was revealed that Meet the Press reached out to all 31 pro-gun rights Senators, not even ONE showed up.

BTW, we reached out to ALL 31 pro-gun rights Sens in the new Congress to invite them to share their views on @meetthepress - NO takers.
— Betsy Fischer Martin (@BetsyMTP) December 16, 2012

Here is more from Politicususa:

 David Gregory also addressed the no-show, saying, “A note here this morning. We reached out to all 31 pro-gun rights senators in the new congress to invite them on the program to share their views on the subject this morning. We had no takers.” 

If you have a real argument to make for gun rights extending to assault weapons, why wouldn’t you make it now? They make their arguments all year long, but suddenly, in the wake of the results of those arguments, they refuse to appear on TV to discuss. 

This should highlight the fact that the pro-gun arguments crafted by the NRA and Republican strategists do not hold up when brought to stand next to the results of the arguments. Yes, this is a sensitive time, but if you’re going to argue for assault weapons to stay legal, you need to be able to do it now.

You know I don't think i could say it any better than my good friend Sarah Jones just did.

I was watching MTP yesterday and heard David Gregory make that remark, and my first response was to snort derisively "Of course!"

Here's the part that blisters my ass. If you had asked these same Senators to show up and discuss Roe VS Wade their mad rush to the studio would have caused traffic jams,

But ask them to defend their conservative positions when actual CHILDREN, not just fetuses, are involved, and suddenly you can't get even ONE of them on the phone.

That's because the Right Wing ONLY cares about unborn children, but once they are born, well they better hurry up and arm themselves, because freedom means that sometimes you may be expected to return fire.