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Blowing Against The Wind

Anti-Gun Nannies, The Gun Thing

…or to be more precise, against a hurricane.  First, we have this situation:

The trifecta of coronavirus fears, George Floyd protests, and the push to defund the police has resulted in surging gun sales in Minnesota.
…
The number of background checks conducted in Minnesota in March represented a 20-year high.
Then came the May 25 death of George Floyd and the subsequent riots, after which Frontiersman Sports owner Kory Krouse said the demand for guns went through the roof.
Krouse said, “People are really scared coming in here. We had a three, four hour wait just to get up to the counter during the height of … the rioting.”
As a result of the surge, gun store inventories are down and ammunition is scarce.

So one would think that a savvy politician would read the tea leaves (or, the actual statistics), and say, “Hmmm… this is probably not the right time to be pushing for gun control.”

Step forward, Minneso-duh! senator Tina Smith:

Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN) is pushing an “assault weapons” ban, a “high capacity” magazine ban, and an expansion of background checks that would outlaw private gun sales.
According to her campaign website, Smith cosponsored the “Assault Weapons Ban of 2019,” which would have banned 205 commonly-owned semiautomatic firearms and all ammunition magazines holding more than ten rounds.
Smith also cosponsored the Background Check Expansion Act (BCEA). The BCEA was a push to expand retail background checks to private sales as well. In doing that, BCEA would have criminalized private sales, making it illegal for a neighbor to sell a five-shot revolver to a lifelong neighbor without first finding a Federal Firearms License holder and having a background check performed.

You have to be in the grip of a special kind of stupid to do this kind of thing in the current circumstances.  But that’s the deal with doctrinaire Socialists:  it’s all about the intentions, never about the outcomes and consequences.  And never mind what the proles think:  the Party is always right, comrades.

Even when they’re horribly, hopelessly wrong.

Classic Designs

Beauty

Just about every sentient human being has their own set of criteria for what constitutes a “classic” design.  My own are fairly simple, in that a classic design:

  • should make everyone who sees it go:  “Ah yes!  That’s  _____________”;
  • must stand the test of time — people should recognize exactly what it is, decades after its creation or even demise;
  • should be universally recognizable even to people not familiar with the product or product category;
  • should be beautiful enough so that one might desire to own it or view it in person, even when you’re not quite sure exactly what it is.

I (and others) might not even care for the stuff, but the iconic designs nevertheless need to be recognized as such.  Here are some examples of what I’m talking about.

E-type Jaguar

Walther PPK (“the James Bond gun”)

The Eiffel Tower

Volkswagen Beetle (old shape)

Cartier (“Tank”) Watch

P-08 (Luger)

Austin Mini (old shape)

The Parthenon

Winchester 1894

Omega Seamaster

1965 Ford Mustang

Spitfire

Those are just the first ones that spring to mind — I used the “five-minute” rule to establish which, to me, exemplify the concept.  Yours may differ, so feel free to comment.

Dept. Of Righteous Shootings

Righteous Shootings

This from Florida, where people seem to forget that everyone has a gun, even (or maybe especially) convenience-store clerks:

The Miami Herald reports that the man, 34-year-old Stephon Brown, allegedly entered the Valero at about 5 a.m. and “pulled out a gun to rob the place.” The clerk responded by pulling his own gun and shooting Brown multiple times.
Brown was able to run out of the store and cross the street before collapsing in front of a McDonald’s.

We will now have a brief pause to allow the applause, cheers and catcalls to subside… nah, the hell with it.  Go right ahead.

Quote Of The Day

QOTD

From Sen. Lindsey Graham (v.2.0):

“Lastly, after the treatment of Justice Kavanaugh I now have a different view of the judicial-nomination process. Compare the treatment of Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Brett Kavanaugh to that of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan, and it’s clear that there is already one set of rules for a Republican president and one set of rules for a Democrat president.”

…although asking the Socialists to obey the rules of logic and fair play is like teaching your cat the virtues of veganism:  pointless, and you’re just going to be ignored.

But yeah, Senator:  give it to ’em good and hard, anyway.

Speed Bump #768

Grammar Nazism

If The Federalist  didn’t exist, where else would I get my daily dose of grammatical irritation?

Here’s today’s offering:

Democrats’ abolishment of the filibuster is one reason the GOP-controlled Senate under Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has been able to confirm so many federal judges.

The word is “abolition”, and spoils what was otherwise an excellent take on the current political situation.  Even the barely-literate Microsoft spell-checking routine flagged that one, which makes me wonder what software the Federalist  writers actually use publish their articles (absent, it seems, any kind of editorial review).

Probably NotePad, come to think of it.  Then they don’t have to bother with all those messy issues of typesetting, spelling and grammar.

Jackals Of The Press #1,254

Media Assholes, Numbers & Statistics

I know, I know:  if you want fair and balanced reporting, don’t read Britain’s Daily Mail.  Yet I persist, despite nonsense like this, because I am weak.

This particular article starts off well, showing people getting their last kicks in before the latest totalitarian bollocks from H.M. Government, in the usual Daily Mail  fashion:

 

All well and good, and nothing puts me in a good mood like Train Smash Women (like I said, I am so weak).

However, the DM then eschews standard journalistic principle — I know, I know — and turns a general-interest piece into a study of the Chinkvirus re-emergence in Britishland.  For reasons best known to themselves, they publish some scawwwwy-looking graphs with the usual crap predictions from Doom & Gloom Inc.:

…although they do have the grace to give some actual numbers:

…which of course shows that even though hospitalizations are increasing, the death rate (which is the important number) isn’t doing anything alarming.

But non-alarms don’t boost readership, so the JOTP publish two graphs which show how scawwwy things could get, only they use Spain and France — no doubt because those two countries’ experience bolsters the alarmism:

Of course, what gives this bullshit away is the way the graphs are scaled.  Note that the right-hand graph (of daily fatalities) has a very fine scale, which despite the steep climb, simply means that the Spanish fatality rate has gone from much less than 1 to just over 2 deaths per million population  (0.2 per hundred thousand = 2 per million), while the Frogs have gone from pretty much zero to 5 per ten million.

I don’t have access to those countries’ accident stats, but I imagine that 2 per million and 5 per 10 million respectively are rather less than the death rates from, oh, falling down stairs or drowning in a bucket of wine.

So the DM took a perfectly okay article about people getting their last unfettered drinks in, and added all that pseudo-scientific bullshit.  Of course, those are really subjects for two different articles (one of the prime journo principles being:  don’t try to tell two stories in a single article).

Were it not for daily pics of the skinny Amanda Holden and the not-so-skinny Kelly Brook, I’d give them up altogether.

 

But did I already mention how weak I am?