Author Larry Correia Posted on December 20, 2012 by correia45

I didn’t want to post about this, because frankly, it is exhausting. I’ve been having this exact same argument for my entire adult life. It is not an exaggeration when I say that I know pretty much exactly every single thing an anti-gun person can say. I’ve heard it over and over, the same old tired stuff, trotted out every single time there is a tragedy on the news that can be milked. Yet, I got sucked in, and I’ve spent the last few days arguing with people who either mean well but are uninformed about gun laws and how guns actually work (who I don’t mind at all), or the willfully ignorant (who I do mind), or the obnoxiously stupid who are completely incapable of any critical thinking deeper than a Facebook meme (them, I can’t stand).

Today’s blog post is going to be aimed at the first group. I am going to try to go through everything I’ve heard over the last few days, and try to break it down from my perspective. My goal tonight is to write something that my regular readers will be able to share with their friends who may not be as familiar with how mass shootings or gun control laws work.

A little background... http://1389blog.com/2012/12/23/larry-correia-refutes-the-gun-controllers...

The American Wind Energy Association wants its production tax credit (PTC) for wind electricity extended yet again. Congress should say no — and terminate the PTC now.

Wind energy is expensive and unreliable. It does nothing to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. It is land- and raw-materials-intensive, parasitic and redundant. Whenever the wind is low or inconsistent, every megawatt of wind power must be supported by electricity generated by fossil-fuel plants. Even more damning, wind turbines disrupt wildlife habitats and butcher birds and bats that are vital to ecological diversity and agriculture.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and American Bird Conservancy say wind turbines kill 440,000 bald and golden eagles, hawks, falcons, owls, cranes, egrets, geese and other birds every year in the United States, along with countless insect-eating bats.

New studies reveal that these appalling estimates are frightfully low and based on misleading or even fraudulent data. The horrific reality is that in the United States alone, “eco-friendly” wind turbines kill an estimated 13 million to 39 million birds and bats every year.

These shocking figures... http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/dec/22/big-wind-tax-credit-exte...

Insanity is described as performing the same act continuously but expecting a different result.

Let's look at what we have learned from this election: Twenty-one of 22 incumbent senators were re-elected, and 353 of 373 incumbent members of the House were re-elected. The American people have re-elected 94 percent of the... http://www.starnewsonline.com/article/20121213/letters/121219818

EUGENE, Ore. - A scenario that police in western Oregon feared came true in the thick of holiday season after two dozen inmates were freed from a county jail that could no longer afford to hold them.

Less than an hour after one low-level offender walked out, authorities say, he was demanding that a bank teller hand over money.

In a time of budget cuts, cases where inmates get out of jail with little punishment only to commit more serious crimes shortly after their release have become all too common, authorities say.

Many in law enforcement predicted this would happen, and it could get worse if the nation goes over the so-called fiscal cliff.

The recession and a steady reduction in federal subsidies to timber counties have led Oregon sheriffs and district attorneys to juggle deep cuts. There are fewer jail beds, sheriff’s patrols, prosecutors, parole officers and specialized investigators.

Prosecutors have to... http://seattle.cbslocal.com/2012/12/25/no-fiscal-cliff-deal-could-cause-...

By Alexandra Zavis and Hashmat Baktash

KABUL, Afghanistan -- A Georgia man working as a contractor to the NATO police mentoring program in Afghanistan was identified Monday as the victim of the latest suspected "green on blue" attack by an Afghan officer.

DynCorp International said the shooting victim was one of its employees, Joseph Griffin, 49, of Mansfield, Ga. A veteran of the U.S. military, he served in various U.S.-based law enforcement positions over the years as well as in support of the company's global training and mentoring programs, the statement said. In his most recent assignment, he was supporting the Afghan Ministry of Interior and National Police.

Griffin was allegedly shot and killed by an Afghan policewoman in the capital, Kabul, authorities said.

If confirmed as another... http://www.latimes.com/news/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-georgia-man-identifi...

The letter came in a box of Halloween decorations purchased at Kmart, but for a year Julie Keith never knew. It gathered dust in her storage, a haunting plea for help hidden among artificial skeletons, tombstones and spider webs.

Keith, a 42-year-old vehicle donation manager at a southeast Portland Goodwill, at one point considered donating the unopened $29.99 Kmart graveyard kit. It was one of those accumulated items you never need and easily forget. But on a Sunday afternoon in October, Keith pulled the orange and black box from storage. She intended to decorate her home in Damascus for her daughter's fifth birthday, just days before Halloween.

She ripped open the box and threw aside the cellophane.

That's when Keith... http://www.oregonlive.com/happy-valley/index.ssf/2012/12/halloween_decor...

Again: Barack Obama and General John Allen should be prosecuted for the deaths of every one of the troops murdered by their Afghan "allies" this year. They are all victims of the politically correct unwillingness to accept unpleasant realities about Islam: that it teaches hatred of and warfare against unbelievers, the virtue of deceit in war, and the impermissibility of cooperating with or allying with infidels on a permanent and lasting basis.

"Afghan policewoman kills coalition contractor in Kabul: NATO," by Mirwais Harooni and Hamid Shalizi for Reuters, December 24 (thanks to S.B.):

(Reuters) - An Afghan woman wearing a police uniform shot dead on Monday a civilian contractor working for Western forces in the police chief's compound in Kabul, NATO said.
The incident is likely to raise troubling questions about the direction of an unpopular war.

No kidding, really?

It appeared to be... http://www.jihadwatch.org/2012/12/yet-another-insider-jihad-attack-afgha...

By R. Albert Mohler Jr.

Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee recently incited a controversy in his state over an unlikely issue — what to call the large decorated evergreen tree in the Statehouse. Mr. Chafee insists that the blue spruce is a “holiday tree,” suggesting that calling the official tree a “Christmas tree” would be akin to requiring schoolchildren to pray.

The governor’s dictate flies in the face of his state’s House of Representatives, which passed a resolution requiring the tree to be known as a Christmas tree “and not as a ‘holiday tree’ or other non-traditional terms.”

Regardless of the governor’s concern, the people of Rhode Island are not likely to follow his dictate. The decorated evergreen tree is now so commonly associated with Christmas that no amount of political correctness can convince Americans that the tree is merely about generic winter holidays.

Many Christians are... http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/dec/22/holiday-tree-cant-change...

By Theodore B. Olson

When the Senate in 1987 defeated President Reagan’s nomination of Robert H. Bork for a seat on the Supreme Court, it blocked the appointment of one of the most superbly qualified individuals ever advanced for the court. Judge Bork had been a Marine, a distinguished professor at two of the nation’s finest law schools, a partner in a respected law firm, solicitor general of the United States and a judge on a leading federal appeals court. He was the father of three children, a widower remarried to a former nun. He was a widely acclaimed scholar, respected as a brilliant, penetrating thinker and a formidable advocate. In an obituary, The New York Times, one of his archest critics, acknowledged that “no one questioned his integrity or intelligence.”

None of that mattered to the 58 senators who blocked his appointment to the Supreme Court. He was savaged and then rejected in one of the sorriest chapters in American political history.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy launched the attack within an hour of the announcement of his nomination. In a vituperative, slanderous speech, Kennedy characterized “Robert Bork’s America” as a cold, heartless, tyrannical society in which the races would be resegregated, women would be forced to resort to “back-alley abortions,” police would batter down doors in “midnight raids” and courthouse doors would be closed to “millions of Americans.”

Kennedy’s opening salvo... http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/dec/20/remembering-a-great-amer...

By Robert Spencer

And making sure the Christians didn't vote in the referendum. More on this story. "Fear keeps Egypt's Christians away from polls," by Hamza Hendawi for the Associated Press, December 18 (thanks to Betsy):

ASSIUT, Egypt (AP) - A campaign of intimidation by Islamists left most Christians in this southern Egyptian province too afraid to participate in last week's referendum on an Islamist-drafted constitution they deeply oppose, residents say. The disenfranchisement is hiking Christians' worries over their future under empowered Muslim conservatives.

Around a week before the vote, some 50,000 Islamists marched through the provincial capital, Assiut, chanting that Egypt will be "Islamic, Islamic, despite the Christians." At their head rode several bearded men on horseback with swords in scabbards on their hips, evoking images of early Muslims conquering Christian Egypt in the 7th Century.

They made sure... http://www.jihadwatch.org/2012/12/egypt-50000-muslims-led-by-sword-wield...

By Robert Spencer

This is no surprise. As I noted yesterday, last summer a Pakistani Muslim cleric said that polio vaccinations were un-Islamic. And you know what happens to un-Islamic things in Pakistan.

An update on this story. "3 more polio workers shot in Pakistan; 8 dead in 48 hours," by Jibran Ahmed for Reuters, December 19 (thanks to Kenneth):

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Three workers in a polio eradication campaign were shot Wednesday in Pakistan, and two of them were killed, the latest in an unprecedented string of attacks over the past three days that has partially halted the U.N.-backed campaign.
The United Nations in Pakistan has pulled all staff involved in the immunization campaign off the streets, spokesman Michael Coleman said....

Government officials were surprised by the violence, saying they had not expected attacks in areas far from the Taliban's strongholds and they would have to change tactics in the health campaign.

"We didn't expect... http://www.jihadwatch.org/2012/12/myjihad-in-pakistan-islamic-supremacis...

By Robert Spencer

After Western Islamic apologists who assure us that Islam has no penalty for apostasy have finished their work in Khartoum, they can make their way to Bishkek.

"Kygyzstan Girl 'Burned' For Faith In Christ," from BosNewsLife, December 18 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

BISHKEK/BUDAPEST (BosNewsLife)-- A young Kyrgyz girl is forced to work in a sewing workshop after being tortured by her parents in Kyrgyzstan because she converted to Christianity, well-informed investigators said Tuesday, December 18.
The troubles began when the girl "accepted Jesus [Christ]" as her Lord and Savior "during a church meeting" despite opposition towards Christians in this heavily Islamic nation, explained aid and advocacy group Open Doors.

"When her parents found out about her decision, they were very upset and took her home to their village" where she was soon mistreated, the group told BosNewsLife in a statement.

"They wanted her...

Written By Patrick J. Buchanan

“No set of laws can eliminate evil from the world, or prevent every senseless act of violence in our society.”

So said President Obama in words of comfort in Newtown. The president was right to speak of evil, but mistaken when he called the massacre “senseless.”

For this was a premeditated and purposeful act of mass murder, and the devil that did it knew exactly what he was doing and why.

When he put... http://www.humanevents.com/2012/12/18/pat-buchanan-the-dead-soul-of-adam...

Written By Warren L. Dean Jr

President George W. Bush was fond of saying that he would not be around when the real history of his administration was written. Whether that is true in the digital age is unclear. What is clear is that a president who leaves unfinished business to his successor — like a war or two — runs the risk that the history of his presidency may be written much sooner than he thinks, and written by those who were left the task of completing that unfinished business.

You might think President Obama would understand that pretty clearly, but he is making the same mistake. The history of his administration will be written almost immediately and perhaps even is being written now. This is because the president is in the process of bankrupting the nation and leaving it to his successor to sort it all out. As Lawrence H. Summers, one of the architects of his burning building, recently wrote: “The great economic questions for the next generation” will involve how to pay for the exploding costs of government. The president has made it abundantly clear that he has no intention of dealing with those questions himself. He will leave it to his successor and to the next generation.

Yet there is... http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/dec/17/next-generation-wont-inh...

Recently, four female servicemen and the Service Women’s Action Network sued the Department of Defense over the military’s combat-exclusion policy. They claim the policy, which does not allow women in most ground-combat situations, relies on outdated combat systems and that it impedes career opportunities for women serving in the U.S. military. The suit highlights some of the most troubling features of radical feminism, which conflates gender equality with gender interchangeability. According to this ideology, women aren’t truly free until they’re indistinguishable from men. Waging a real war on women, the movement has pitted itself against both science, which finds sexual differences throughout the animal kingdom, and women, who routinely express a preference for the gender roles that feminists assail.

One of the latest examples comes from a survey of undergraduates at the University of California-Santa Cruz on the question of marriage proposals. After interviewing 277 students, researchers found that no one — whether a single man or a single woman — preferred for the woman in a relationship to propose marriage. That unanimity is somewhat surprising, given the impact of decades of entrenched academic feminism on liberal universities like UC-Santa Cruz.

Instead of this... http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/dec/14/radical-feminism-waging-...

ABN show from last Wednesday night.

Written By Michael Taube

Why do western democracies such as the United States remain in the United Nations? After all the politically charged decisions made by this disgraceful organization, it’s often difficult to understand the reason.

Perhaps the West’s laissez-faire attitude toward this growing cesspool of political activity is finally coming to an end. A highly controversial decision with respect to a volatile part of the world could be the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back.

Two weeks ago, the U.N. overwhelmingly granted statehood to Palestine. An astonishing 138 member states supported this motion, with 41 abstaining and five not present during the vote. Only nine member states rejected this motion: Canada, the Czech Republic, Israel, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Panama, Palau and the United States.

Palestine is therefore... http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/dec/11/us-should-walk-out-of-th...

The new U.S. military handbook for troops deployed to the Middle East orders soldiers not to make derogatory comments about the Taliban or criticize pedophilia, among other Islamic things.

Mass beheadings, gendercide, gassing of girls' schools, mass slaughter of non-believers and less than devout Muslims, attacks on US soldiers, acid attacks on women, brutal burka enforcement ..... must not be criticzed. So speaketh the caliph in the White House. He is stalking these anti-humans for peace, after all.

Bloody hell, bring... http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2012/12/new-army-manual-...

Written By Dave McKinney

SPRINGFIELD, IL - In a huge win for gun-rights groups, a divided federal appeals court in Chicago Tuesday tossed the state's ban on carrying concealed weapons and gave Illinois' Legislature 180 days to craft a law legalizing concealed carry.

"The debate is over. We won. And there will be a statewide carry law in 2013," said Todd Vandermyde, a lobbyist for the National Rifle Association.

In a split opinion (see below), the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court ruling in two cases downstate that upheld the state's longstanding prohibition against carrying concealed weapons.

Illinois is the only state with an outright prohibition on concealed carry.

"We are disinclined... http://blogs.suntimes.com/politics/2012/12/big_win_for_gun-rights_groups...