A liberal writer buys an AR. Hijinx ensue.
That’s how long it took me to buy an AR-15, the type of semiautomatic rifle used in the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history. Seven minutes. From the moment I handed the salesperson my driver’s license to the moment I passed my background check.
by Helen Ubiñas, Daily News Columnist @NotesFromHel
It likely will take more time than that during the forthcoming round of vigils to respectfully read the names of the more than 100 people who were killed or injured. It takes very little time to fire sufficient number of rounds with a semiautomatic, assuming you have good aim and a lot of targets.
It’s obscene.
Horrifying.
Maybe surprising to some – though it shouldn’t be, not at this point in our bloody, hate-filled history. You sure you're talking about the USA?
If it wasn’t so easy to get a gun in this country, the 29-year-old gunman who went on a shooting rampage in a popular gay nightclub in Orlando on Sunday wouldn’t have been able to buy the weapon he used to kill 49 people and injure 53. Don't forget to mention the gunman was a government contractor who already had a grounding in weaponry, and who subscribed to a religion that forbids homosexuality, and that he himself was a homosexual.
If it wasn’t so easy to get a gun in this country, another gunman who came before him wouldn’t have been able to use the same kind of firearm to kill elementary-school children in Newtown, Conn. Adam Lanza was a psychopath who essentially stole the guns he used on those kids.
If it wasn’t so appallingly easy to get a gun in this country, it wouldn’t be easy for the next gunman to deliver the kind of carnage that’s as much a part of this country as the American flag. Nice.
And there will undoubtedly be a next one. No one can prevent murder by taking away firearms. We know that from a 100+ years of experience from republics as well as from autocratic societies. And no question there will be another mass shooting. The question remains, how are you going to stop it? By buying a firearm and bitching about it, or by buying a firearm and learning to use it properly and safely.
This has been said, but bears repeating and repeating and repeating some more. If nothing changed after children – babies – were slaughtered inside their school, do any of us really believe anything will change following the deaths of people so many fear and loathe simply for trying to live their truths? Wut?
The gunman was apparently enraged over seeing a same-sex couple kiss. Think about that. Love enraged him. Love made him kill. The gunman was himself homosexual. Think about that, yourself.
But I try not to think about any of that as I drive over to the gun shop in Philadelphia. I need to come up with some plausible story, I think. What if I’m asked why, a day after this massacre, I want to buy the very type of gun used to slaughter people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. Yes, when handling firearms and dealing with the purveyors of firearms, it is always best to come up with a good cover story.
I consider my options:
I’m a woman who wants a rifle for safety reasons? You're a psychopath with an agenda, as with every leftist/liberal in history.
I’m a gun enthusiast with a soft spot for military-style rifles? One look, a few questions and a business owner can tell you know little about military rifles.
I’m a card-carrying member of the NRA who is afraid the government will be coming for my guns? Did you "Give a Buck" when you bought your rifle?
Turns out I don’t need a story. The AR-15 is on display in the window of the gun shop. It is being promoted as the gun of the week. A good business practice.
What will it take to buy one, I ask the sales guy.
Did I have identification? Yes.
Was I a U.S. citizen? Yes.
“Bingo,” the friendly gun shop sales guy said. “All we have to do is fill paperwork out.” I’ve filled out more paperwork at the doctor’s office for a routine checkup than I did Monday afternoon. Doesn't that invalidate the premise of this whole missive?
I felt a little squeamish about not telling him who I was and what I was trying to do, but this wasn’t about them; they weren’t doing anything illegal. The truth is that I could have bought the gun as easily in any gun shop in Pennsylvania. I just didn’t realize how easily. Shorter: Likely she lied to the gun shop owner.
Go to a licensed gun store. Fill out about a page and a half of forms. Wait (if that’s really the right word for it) for an instant background check, and then pay the man. I told the guy I was on a budget, so I got an AR-15 for $759.99. God bless America. You could have gone to Armslist and picked up a decent AR, used for around $550, no background checks, assuming the seller doesn't require one; usually less if he does.
No need for a concealed carry permit. No mandatory training, though the guys did give me a coupon for a free day pass for a local gun range. No need for even a moment to at least consider how gross all of this felt as relatives of the dead were still being notified.
To be fair, there was an extra 10 or 15 minutes or so of chitchat inside the gun store before I walked out with a cardboard box with the words Smith & Wesson emblazoned on it, and an atta-girl for thinking ahead and buying the most popular rifle in the country before there’s a run on the gun from nervous gun owners who fear a ban on them. There will be no "run" on ARs. There hasn't been despite numerous domestic terrorist and criminal small arms attacks since 2013. The data I compile on a weekly basis doesn't bear the fear out. The data does show that if you buy now, before Christmas, you'll get a slightly better price, but only slightly.
“Yeah, because it was about the gun, not Islamic terrorism, right?” a man buying a gun offered, unsolicited.
Here we go, I thought.
The fact is, what shattered so many lives in the early hours Sunday was about many things.
Homophobia, first and foremost. To repeat. The shooter was homosexual. He was a psycho with a gun and a mission.
Radicalism – the American gunman claimed allegiance to the Islamic State and praised the Boston Marathon bombers. Even if that’s not true, the radicals won’t have a problem with that.
Mental illness.
And yes, guns. Insane, nonsensical access to guns. So pick whatever reason or narrative matches your politics or agenda. Have at it, because the truth is that while they all play a part, what’s really destroying this country is fear and hate. A festering fear and hate that we better think about when it’s time to vote for our next president, because the fear and hate is not all coming from the outside. It’s not all from some unnamed foreign bogeyman. Increasingly it’s from within, from down the street, the next state over, the next potential leader of this country. First thing she has gotten right in this article.
As I walked to my car with my brand-new gun, I wasn’t sure what to do with it. I didn’t want it, but I also didn’t want it in anyone else’s hands either. Easy to disable an AR.
So I drove to the Philadelphia police’s Sixth District on 11th and Winter, where I seemed to stump more than a few officers when I explained who I was and what I wanted to do. Have you ever tried to turn in a gun in this city? Spoiler alert: It takes longer than it does to buy a gun. It should take longer. Kops don't want to be on the hook for an improperly transferred firearm anymore than you want the firearm.
As an officer prepared the paperwork, I noticed a sign that hung over one of the walls.
United We Stand, it read.
My God, I thought, what a lie.
We are more divided every single day, and yet our answer to that is to meet fear and hate with more fear and hate and then expect a different outcome. To be shocked at the world we live in, left to do little else but hold vigils.
While I write this, thousands are attending a vigil at City Hall.
My heart is with you all. But while we’re mourning the dead, let us mourn the national loss of humanity that is to blame for this world we have created.
And let us take more than seven minutes to do it.
Editor’s Note: This was revised to reflect that since original publication, the weapon used in the attack was identified as a Sig Sauer MCX, an AR-15 type semiautomatic rifle, but not an AR-15. Sig Sauer make a helluva rifle. Good choice.
#1
The claim the jihadist was gay was part of the attempt to make it about anything but Islam -- and its since been discredited.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
11/08/2016 6:20 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Our state has instant background check through the TBI. It is tied into NICS. If you can prove who you are, have successfully completed ATF Form 4473 and nothing comes back from a computer check, you might be able to purchase an AR-15 in 7 minutes although I think that's pushing it. I've never been able to complete the process that quickly. The liberal writer is obviously trying to make a point as to how easy it is to purchase a firearm...and stretching the truth.
#5
So she wanted to see if she could buy the exact same gun, but did not research the weapon used, so she bought the wrong one - according to her thesis - and brought along someone to take her picture walking back to the car?
'Don't you know who I am?! I am getting this gun off the streets for you!'
'Ummmm...some lady people will make fun of half a year from now for spending a lot of money for creds to a poorly thought out and written editorial?'
[Asharq Al-Awsat] Riyadh- The American based cable CNN recently used five-year-old misleading footage of Yemen when reporter Christiane Amanpour was interviewing Arab coalition’s spokesman and Saudi top Defense Ministry consultant Brig. Gen. Ahmad Al-Assiri.
The Saudi-led Arab Coalition is an Arab effort to restore the internationally recognized government to authority in Yemen, a country which has been ravaged by Iran-aligned putschists.
Amanpour, in an offbeat attitude, accused Saudi Arabia of crimes against humanity in Yemen, such as forced starvation against local civilians.
Commenting to the wild accusations of Amanpour, Brg.Gen Assiri said that he was sure that the footage was retrieved from areas sieged by coup forces, namely Taiz.
Amanpour responded with personal disregard as to the source of the image, and focused on whether the photo showcasing a starved eighteen-year-old female was real or not.
Four days after airing the interview, and after being looked into, the footage was discovered to date back five years ago, before the military operation by the Saudi-led Arab coalition was launched to aid in restoring peace to Yemen.
The military campaign dates only three and a half years back.
Saudi social media activists demanded that the rowdy accusations made against the Kingdom’s efforts in Yemen be taken back for the lack of professionalism—the footage was used to manipulate viewers’ emotions, spurring anti-Saudi sentiment and leading to predisposed judgment.
Saudi columnist and expert on Iranian political affairs Mohammad al-Sulami tweeted on his utter shock on the revelation made on the credibility of Amanpour’s footage. He also questioned whether an apology is due or not.
Twitter account users were further astonished at Amanpour’s complete negligence to mention Saudi Arabia’s relief efforts in Yemen, as to produce an unbiased argument before the audience. Furthermore, both Amanpour and CNN had failed to report on 34 aid ships which have been reportedly seized by coup militiamen and withheld from reaching needy civilians.
"In Berlin or in the north of Duisburg there are neighborhoods where colleagues hardly dare to stop a car -- because they know that they'll be surrounded by 40 or 50 men." These attacks amount to a "deliberate challenge to the authority of the state -- attacks in which the perpetrators are expressing their contempt for our society." — Rainer Wendt, President of the German Police Union.
"Once Duisburg-Marxloh was a popular shopping and residential area. Now clans claim the streets for themselves. The police are powerless. The descent of the district is nightmarish." — N24 Television.
Police say they are alarmed by the brutality and aggression of the clans, who are said to view crime as leisure activity. If police dare to intervene, hundreds of clan members are mobilized to confront the police.
A 17-page report prepared for the NRW State Parliament revealed how Lebanese clans in Duisburg divide up certain neighborhoods in order to pursue their criminal activities, such as robbery, drug dealing and extortion.
"Further data collection is not legally permissible. Both internally and externally, any classification that could be used to depreciate human beings must be avoided. In this respect, the use of the term 'family clan' is forbidden from the police point of view." — Ralf Jäger, Interior Minister, North Rhine-Westphalia.
Two police officers stopped a driver who ran a red light. The driver got out of the car and ran away. When police caught up with him, they were confronted by more than 50 migrants. A 15-year-old attacked a policeman from behind and began strangling him, rendering him unconscious.
Mass, unvetted immigration from Africa, Asia and the Middle East is turning parts of Germany into no-go zones — lawless areas where the state has effectively lost control and where native Germans, including the police, increasingly fear to come.
German authorities steadfastly deny the existence of such areas, but confidential police reports, testimonies from police on the ground and anecdotal evidence from local citizens all confirm that parts of major German cities have descended into pockets of lawlessness where criminal migrants have usurped control of the streets from German police.
h/t Instapundit
...The question of "flawed, imperfect, damaged, etc." was never of any consequence to me. It was, indeed, factually meaningless. All men and women are flawed. I'm Jewish, not Christian, but I certainly get the concept of "we are all sinners." You have to be asleep twenty-four hours a day not to notice that. They say Churchill was terrible to his subordinates, Eisenhower committed adultery, and on and on...
So this election was never about Donald's peccadilloes to me. Or even Bill Clinton's rancid behavior and his wife's repeated enabling of it.
This election was always about one over-riding issue under which all are subsumed. That issue is the corruption and virtual dissolution of our democratic republic by elites.
This election was and is about the rule of elites over the people, something we have all seen in full bloom in the WikiLeaks releases.
...At first blush, or any blush, Donald Trump--a brash real estate tycoon who made much of his money from gambling casinos--would seem an unlikely leader for such a crusade. But I submit it's the contrary (and, no, I'm not virtue signaling--at least I don't think so). The extreme situation we are faced with today--we might call it "crony socialism"--needed and needs an extreme personality both to get our attention and to get change accomplished. Nothing much would have happened, in all probability, with any of the other candidates. This time, of all times, an outsider was necessary.
[TheGreatRecession] So, FBI Director James Comey suddenly turns tail again, saying, "Nope. Nothing here people. False alarm. Carry on!"
Let me think about this...
The Comey Conundrum
Apparently, the Republicans didn’t consolidate enough hatred against James Comey for refusing to have the FBI recommend charges against Hillary the first time, so Comey decided he needed to make the entire Democratic party hate him, too, by announcing a second investigation of Hillary Clinton, which caused a large swing in the polls against her.
That, apparently, still didn’t bring enough new hatred against him, so Comey had to pull a second switch and say, "Sorry folks; false alarm," just to give the Republican hornet nest a second kick.
That also helped him ensure that the Democrats are loaded with ammo aimed at his raw behind after the election because they can now say, "You damaged the election for something that a few days later you said, yourself, amounted to nothing! Why didn’t you exercise a little more caution before you spouted off about these new emails?"
And it assured that, in case there were not enough agents in his own party that hated them, there would be more of those, too.
So, if we’re going to take James Comey at his word this second time around (that there was nothing there worthy of filing charges), we have to also believe Comey decided this year that committing political suicide in a spectacular fashion would be the greatest thing he could do with his life.
So, this is the Comey Conundrum: Did he say I want my entire agency and both parties to hate me more than an overflowing toilet, so I’ll poop my pants twice in the most public way possible and see if I can’t destroy myself -or- did he back away because of threats as big as death?
I dunno. Just askin’. Continue reading for the line "...the entire Federal Bureau of (re)Investigation."
#1
FBI Director James Comey looks back on [his] life [and wondered where it went]. He had this yen to be in the dustbin of history--a minor footnote, if even that, in the parade of history. And he could have been a contender had he been guided by law and principle.
#3
the parallels between the bolsheviks and our current conundrum seem more than coincidental. Mama as Nicholas 2, HIldabeast as Kaiser Wilhelm.......... and almost exactly 100 years ago....go figure
[Spectator] In 1778 Thomas Jefferson wrote, "Laws will be wisely formed and honestly administered in proportion as those who form and administer them are wise and honest." Does anyone believe that the Sage of Monticello, had he been unfortunate enough to know her, would have included Hillary Clinton among the ranks of such people? The voters certainly don’t. According to a McClatchy-Marist poll released Friday, a majority of the electorate believes Clinton has done "something illegal." That should be reassuring as it relates to the wisdom of the voters. Sadly, it isn’t. The survey also shows Clinton leading Donald Trump 46-44.
And it gets worse. When asked if the various legal controversies that swirl around Clinton with ever-increasing velocity would make a difference in the way they vote tomorrow, fully 65 percent of Democrats answered "no difference at all." Is this an artifact of the "Gruber Principle"? For those who may have forgotten, this is a reference to the incredibly disingenuous Democrat strategy that was used to pass Obamacare. It will forever be associated with MIT Professor Jonathan Gruber, who injudiciously described it on video as follows: "[T]he stupidity of the American voter... was really, really critical for the thing to pass."
Contrary to conventional wisdom, the world should hope for the election of Donald Trump next Tuesday. American policy has become a fetid morass in which ideology and influence-peddling jointly serve to insulate its leaders from the real world. It is not simply that America’s leaders are out of touch, but that they are in continuous touch with a fictitious construct of the world that excludes the possibility of policy course correction.
America’s policy elites are sleepwalkers in the way that historian Christopher Clark described Europe’s leaders in August 1914 on the eve of the First World War. Five years and 500,000 corpses after the disastrous "Arab Spring" and the Libyan coup of 2011, the American elite still does not understand that today’s chaos in the Middle East is borne of American meddling.
President Obama, Secretary of State Clinton, and the McCain mainstream of the Republican Party passionately believed that the Arab world had broken free of its tyrannical past and was en route to democracy. By destroying the old dictatorships, the United States simply opened the field to ethnic and sectarian war. Syria is in civil war, Iraq is close to it, and even Turkey is at risk.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Spectator] In 1778 Thomas Jefferson wrote, "Laws will be wisely formed and honestly administered in proportion as those who form and administer them are wise and honest." Does anyone believe that the Sage of Monticello, had he been unfortunate enough to know her, would have included Hillary Clinton among the ranks of such people? The voters certainly don’t. According to a McClatchy-Marist poll released Friday, a majority of the electorate believes Clinton has done "something illegal." That should be reassuring as it relates to the wisdom of the voters. Sadly, it isn’t. The survey also shows Clinton leading Donald Trump 46-44.
