NRA spokesperson very angry that the media describes guns as "weapons." I'm sorry, what?

Courtesy of Media Matters:  

GRANT STINCHFIELD (HOST): When it comes to media bias, it is often the little things that matter most. Seemingly innocuous phrases designed to sway your opinion. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution recently wrote an article about campus carry taking effect in Georgia and the controversy surrounding it. But it's their use of the word weapon that has me bewildered. The reporter uses “weapons” in place of firearms or guns so many times, it just becomes bizarre. Here, "Fears of gun owners getting drunk and firing their weapons." I firmly believe she uses the phrase weapons over firearms in an effort to scare the uninformed. But then I realized Georgia calls their concealed carry permits a “weapons carry license.” I don’t like that name at all. To me, the military carries weapons, guns carried for offensive purposes. I carry a firearm, a tool used for self-defense. To me, it is actually a very important distinction. By Georgia, a state rich in firearms history, using the term weapons in an official capacity, it hurts the perception of law-abiding gun ownership. The media already has it out for us, why give them more ammunition? 

Okay it is one thing to claim that guns are perfectly safe in the hands of the average American, a claim which I continue to dispute, however to claim that they are not a weapon completely defies logic.

The NRA has for decades now attempted to convince people that guns are simply tools similar to a crowbar or a knife, meaning that though they COULD take a life, they're actual purpose is to do something else entirely.

In the case of a crowbar it would be to pry something apart, and a knife is used to cut food or perhaps rope, but there really is NO other purpose that a gun serves than to take a life.

When these folks claim that a gun is a tool for self protection they avoid the fact that it only protects if an assailant believes they are in danger of being injured or killed by the WEAPON, or are in fact injured or killed by the WEAPON.

It is the very fact that they own a weapon capable of injuring or killing which is supposed to keep the owner safe.

Of course statistics do not actually support that assertion, but that is an entirely different conversation.

But before we can have that conversation at the very least we should agree on what we are talking about, and that is that guns are in fact weapons. Weapons which are designed to kill, and that is all they are designed to do.

Donald Trump to repeal Obama era restriction on police access to military style equipment.

Courtesy of HuffPo:  

President Donald Trump will repeal restrictions that former President Barack Obama placed on police access to excess military gear, allowing the the federal government to immediately resume handing out free bayonets, grenade launchers, tracked armored vehicles such as tanks and other equipment to law enforcement departments around the country. 

Trump will sign an executive order on Monday that repeals the limits Obama placed on the access to some military surplus items in 2015. Obama’s move followed the “provocative” response to the August 2014 unrest in Ferguson, Mo., where St. Louis County Police officers atop armored vehicles pointed sniper rifles at peaceful demonstrators in broad daylight. Policing experts in a report for the Justice Department found that the police actions “inflamed tensions” and violated constitutional rights.

Trump’s forthcoming executive order was announced by Attorney General Jeff Sessions in a speech to the Fraternal Order of Police on Monday. Other items that federal government can again supply to local law officers include camouflage uniforms, weaponized aircraft, and ammunition above .50 caliber.

Yep, nothing says let's disperse this crowd peacefully like pulling out the ole grenade launcher and weaponized aircraft.

But hey, if President Obama was for it, it must be bad.

Right Donnie?

US general accuses Russia of providing weapons to the Taliban which were used against American backed forces.

Courtesy of Yahoo News:  

The United States must confront Russia for providing weapons to the Taliban for use against American-backed forces in Afghanistan, top U.S. military officials said Monday. 

At a news conference with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis at his side, Gen. John Nicholson, the American commander in Afghanistan, wouldn't provide specifics about Russia's role in Afghanistan. But said he would "not refute" that Moscow's involvement includes giving weapons to the Taliban. 

Earlier Monday, a senior U.S. military official told reporters in Kabul that Russia was giving machine guns and other medium-weight weapons. The Taliban are using the weapons in the southern provinces of Helmand, Kandahar and Uruzgan, according to the official, who briefed journalists on intelligence information on condition of anonymity.

Well this is certainly going to put a strain on the Putin/Trump bromance.

Now not only are there various investigations into the Russian hacking of our election, but there are also these allegations that the Russians are providing weapons to our enemies.

Yep, Trump is never going to get his thirty pieces of silver from Putin if this keeps up.

FBI arrests three men in North Carolina who were preparing to kill soldiers participating in the Jade Helm 15 exercises.

Anti-‘Jade Helm 15′ nuts arrested in North Carolina after hoarding weapons and making bombs http://t.co/4PWxPh0B1H pic.twitter.com/jwQIcsv9Sp

— R Joseph (@rjoseph7777) August 5, 2015

Courtesy of RT:  

Federal officials say three men arrested in North Carolina were stockpiling weapons for a murderous plot against US soldiers. According to the FBI, the trio believed a Special Forces exercise dubbed Jade Helm 15 was a pretext for imposing martial law. 

FBI documents unsealed Monday say the three residents of Gaston County bought guns and ammunition and attempted to build explosive devices, all with intent of killing US soldiers they believed were coming to establish martial law. The three were identified as Walter Litteral, 50, Christopher Barker, 41, and Christopher Campbell, 30. 

The FBI claims Litteral planned to make explosive devices out of tennis balls covered in nails and coffee cans filled with ball bearings. He also purchased ammunition for a 338 caliber rifle, hand-held radios, Kevlar helmets, body armor and face masks, which the authorities say were to be used in “armed resistance to the feared military occupation,” according to the AP. 

Most of the information in the indictment comes from an FBI informant, who opened a military surplus store in Belmont, not far from Campbell’s tattoo parlor, in January. The informant said Campbell approached him with “anti-government” views and introduced him to Litteral. 

According to court documents, the two men told the informant that they believed “that the federal government intended to use the armed forces to impose martial law in the United States, which they and others would resist with violent force.”

Wait, the FBI informant opened a "military surplus store" and then gathered evidence against these guys?

Now why does THAT sound so familiar?

Drop Zone employee, Sally Heath, and Bill Fulton.

Now I have no evidence that Fulton was involved in this investigation, and of course if I did I would deny it, but you have to admit that this is eerily similar to how Fulton assisted the FBI in the Schaeffer Cox domestic terrorism case.

In this case however it would seem that the FBI might have jumped the gun.

After all if these guys were buying weapons to protect themselves from a military imposed martial law that was never coming, then did they actually represent a danger?

But then again perhaps just the fact that they were willing to kill soldiers, and were arming themselves for that eventuality, might have been reason enough to get them locked up.

President Obama announces plan to restrict police use of military style equipment.

Courtesy of Mother Jones:  

On Monday, the White House announced a plan to set new restrictions on local police departments from obtaining military-style equipment from the federal government. The limitation on military gear is part of an ongoing effort to rebuild trust between community members and law enforcement officials following the unrest seen in Ferguson, Missouri, particularly the police response to protesters there. 

The announcement is in response to a report put forth by a task force created by the president in December to address broken police relations, especially in minority communities, across the country. Banned items include wheeled-armored vehicles, battering rams, grenade launchers, and more.

Many believe that much of the increase in police brutality has to do with cops being outfitted and trained as if they are going into a war zone, when in fact these are American neighborhoods, populated by American citizens.

After all who could forget the police snipers atop armored vehicles who rolled into Ferguson apparently ready to open fire on mostly peaceful protesters?

Thanks to our 2nd Amendment there are certainly times when the cops need to be outfitted with powerful weaponry and protective clothing and armored vehicles, but those times are statistically few and far between.

I have to wonder how some police departments will feel about giving up their shiny GI Joe paraphernalia but ultimately it will undoubtedly help the police to connect better with the communities they serve, and reduce the incidence of inhumane treatment.

For a mere $1,200.00 Ammosexuals can now make their own AR-15s at home with no government oversight, or regulation whatsoever. Oh, that's not a good thing.

California State Senator Kevin de Leon holding what he calls a "ghost gun."

Courtesy of Raw Story: 

A gun rights advocate has invented a 3-D printer that will allow amateur gunsmiths to create AR-15 assault rifles without serial numbers or the hassle of a background check, WIRED reports. 

Earlier this year, Cody Wilson demonstrated that anyone could use a 3-D printer to print a gun. 

“If 3-D printing means anything, if the digital revolution and 3-D printing revolution have any interesting terminus, it’s because we will all have access to greater means of production — just like these cameras and computers that we have enable us to become cultural producers outside of the monopoly schemes of the legacy players, so too with material things, and that must, of course, include guns,” Wilson told We Are Change. 

“To not think that it included guns, to be surprised by that, means that you’re just kind of drinking the Kool-Aid,” he added. 

According to Wired, his new project in DIY gunsmithing is even more ambitious — now, he is using a PC-connected milling machine, dubbed “the Ghost Gunner,” to print the component of an AR-15 rifle called the “lower receiver.” 

The lower receiver is the most heavily regulated component of the AR-15, as it is the body of the gun that connects all of the assault rifle’s other parts. For $1,200, Wilson’s company, Defense Distributed, will sell anyone a computer-numerically-controlled mill that will allow them to print the lower receiver. 

They can then purchase the other, less relegated elements of the AR-15 — such as the stock, magazine, and barrel — from online gun shops and create a fully functional automatic weapon that contains no serial number and required no background check. Such weapons are sometimes referred to as “ghost guns” — hence, the name of Wilson’s mill.

So essentially this technology allows individuals who really do not want anybody to know which weapons they have, or how many, to simply manufacture them on their own.

And gee which sort of individual might find that idea REALLY attractive?

Honest, upstanding citizens who only want to take the weapons to the firing range on Sundays to express their God given 2nd Amendment rights?

Or perhaps nefarious individuals who would like access to weapons that cannot be traced forensically back to a buyer, gun shop, or manufacturer?

Yeah, I am going to guess the latter.

A final thought for today.

A truth spoken so many years ago, yet one which is still ignored by those who could take it to heart and change the world for the better by clothing the naked, healing the sick, and feeding the hungry.

How much do we spend to improve our ability to take a life in relation to how much we spend in order to save one? And recognizing that incredible disparity do we still dare to call ourselves humane? Or evolved? Or Christians?

All of us in this country should look to our past in shame and resolve to move forward in peace and brotherhood.  If not now, when? And if not us, then who?