Saturday, October 26, 2019

Here There Be Morons




There's no picture for today's post, because you never have a camera handy when you really need it. So today, you're going to use your imagination (assisted by my Paint skills) to supply the shot I don't have.

Onboard Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, there are the rifle ranges familiar to everyone in the Corps on the West Coast, at Edson Range. The entire complex sits right next to Interstate 5, across from the relatively new USN LCAC facility. You can see acres of rifle ranges from the freeway if you know where you're looking for them, and nearer the interstate, multiple barracks used by countless recruit platoons on their three-week pilgrimage from MCRD San Diego for rifle training. And even closer to the freeway than that, sits the massive mess hall, to feed those recruits three squares a day during their range weeks. Around that mess hall on one side is a huge cement patio, for recruit platoons to form up on as their members finish their meals. It's surrounded by an even bigger swath of lawn, all within eyesight of the freeway as well.

And right at the border between cement and grass, there sits a wooden sign, about 4' tall, on a 2' square board, all painted in classic USMC scarlet. On it, in 1"-2" high brilliantly contrasting gold, are military stencil letters, with a blisteringly simple message, and that message is the illustration for today's post, as the photograph I never got to take:


I didn't need to pull down heat from the drill instructors when I saw this sign, by asking them why such a sign would be necessary. I knew why, without ever being told (as does anyone who ever spent five seconds in any branch of the military. Even the Air Farce or the Notional Guard):

The sign was there, out in front of God and everybody, because at least once - and probably more than that - some total fuckwit had been standing at ease waiting to get marched back to barracks, and decided out on the concrete at the edge of the lawn, a couple of hundred yards from a busy interstate, that the perfect place to make a head call (that's Marine lingo for relieving one's bladder) was - of course! - right out there at the grassy boundary of the lawn, in plain sight of not just the entire passing conga lines of traffic, but in front of a veritable glass wall of windows of the mess hall, with every officer and drill instructor in plain sight sitting on the other side to keep an eye on you. And at least once, someone had done so.

Your imagination's wildest dreams of the ass-chewing that followed cannot begin to conjure the retribution visited on Pvt. Dipshit at that point, but not least among the several consequences to the event was the creation of the aforementioned sign, as sure as apples fall off apples trees.

The lesson, gentle readers, is thus:
When you see a sign like that, you have discovered the boundary between people with common sense, and where begins the territory inhabited by thorough-going fucktards.
And those fucktards are legion.

It's true in basic training in the military, and it's true in the rest of the world.
I could offer dozens of everyday non-military examples, but just two more will suffice:

Remove shirt before ironing.

Warning: wearing cape does not enable user to fly.

Whenever you encounter boilerplate warning designed for people with mid double-digit IQs, you have discovered how many fuckwit minions live and move amongst you every day.

No one asks why these warning are there, because like me in boot camp, they know why without being told:
Because we suffer morons daily, and have to mollycoddle them, lest they injure themselves, and then sue, or do any thousand and one idiotic acts, then act all surprised when gravity works.

Coffee at McDonald's that's hot. (Who knew??)
Notes on silica gel packets (and now Tide Pods) that say: Do Not Eat.
The "bible" of instructions for the terminally stupid engraved on the barrel of every Ruger firearm.
And on and on.

And when, perchance, you decide that the local walk-up window is a good place to carry your battle rifle inside city limits, but outside the bounds of the common sense of even ordinary morons, you invite government, in its ham-fisted way, to put up another "Do Not Urinate Here" sign. Like they will, and like they do. Blame asshole parents, a public education system that would embarrass Neanderthals, and people with the manners of billy goats who were raised on a womb bill of fare of fetal alcohol syndrome and a steady pre-teen diet of lead paint chips, and being dropped on their heads multiple times before hitting third grade.

But for whatever reason, stupid people breed, usually far out of proportion to the non-jackassical, and even rampant Darwinism in action can't kill them fast enough to keep the mean IQ of the human race in the low triple digits, hardly anywhere.

So laws like the one mentioned yesterday aren't the slippery slope you imagine, they are, in fact, the efforts of the middling bright (which is government on its best day, as anyone who's seen it close-up can testify) to erect, not a slippery slope, but a steep cliff warning to demarcate the line between the sensible and the egregiously stupid. And people still fall over the edge daily. Sometimes, hourly.

One of maybe 100,000 Fail videos available on YouTube,
 besides thousands of hours of the TV show COPS.

Yes, government, given sunlight and water, like all weeds, will metastasize, but let's be fair here: so will stupid people.

Don't believe me: go to any public restroom. Or day care playroom. Or the movies. Or any public highway.

You wanna bitch about your rights? Start by telling me what responsibilities those rights carry.

The Second Amendment conveys no rights, and revoking it outright changes but one thing: the recognition that some rights pre-date all written law, and the duty of government is only legitimate when it protects those natural law rights.

But left unwritten, and no less valid, is the natural law right that you don't get to use your rights as an excuse to be a jackass in public with them. You can swing your fist, but only as far as the next person's nose. And if you do it often enough, even if you stop short, swinging right up to the edge of someone else's nose is going to get you decked, for cause. More so, from mores more ancient than Philadelphia in 1787, where women and children are concerned.

So before someone starts blathering about how this law or that law is a foul, horrific exercise in eventually loading you into a boxcar and fluoridating your drinking water, let's maybe start out by recognizing that letting the biggest morons in society loose and free, and letting them define the boundaries of intelligent behavior, is more than a little bit to blame for the 40 shelf-yards of legal code and regulations you've lived under your entire life in a nominally "free" country.

No, we shouldn't need 39.99998 yards of that law, and we can all wish it weren't so, but over there, at the boundary of society between grass and concrete patio, there's some fucktard making a large wet yellow spot, and screwing it up for everybody, and three chances out of five, it's your own Cousin Dipshit with his tackle out, providing the precise excuse for that sign.

Own that, stop arguing theoretical hypothetical cases where all men are rational and moral, and start living in the real world where they're the exact irrational fuckwits we meet 24/7/365 in the real world.

Then we can talk.

Start with two competing thoughts, both absolutely and equally true:


"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." - John Adams


Our country's Founders knew the absolute truth of both thoughts, and that's precisely why our Constitution took the form it did.
Bear that in mind before you present some ersatz hagiographized version of it as reality.
You're wrong, and you'll just piss off people brighter than you are, for trying.

28 comments:

Cederq said...

You could just run on that platform (common sense)for national office and would make Pres Trump look like tweaker with Tourette Syndrome.

FredLewers said...

You said two more non military examples would suffice. I don't think it will suffice. You are preaching to the choir. It would benefit society greatly if we were to...
Never mind...
Gotta figure out how to convince stupid people to not breed. That's the only answer. lemme know when you figure that out.

Punzdeleon said...

re: "The "bible" of instructions for the terminally stupid engraved on the barrel of every Ruger firearm." I purchased a Ruger Wrangler today. Amazingly there is nothing engraved on the barrel. On one side of the frame there is 'Ruger 22LR Wrangler'. On the other side is the serial number. Is common sense creeping back?

Punzdeleon said...

A brief review of the Ruger Wrangler I purchased today. I wiped the barrel with solvent and dry patched it. There is no safety like the new Heritage 22LR revolver. The Ruger has no half cock. Open the loading gate and the cylinder spins freely. The loading gate is very stiff. The trigger OK, crisp but not light. At 30 ft CCI standard velocity 15 rounds went into 2". It suits my needs much better than my New Heritage 22 revolver.

Unknownsailor said...

The military has a great many rules written as a result of someone, sometime, somewhere, doing something stupid. Not an insignificant number of them were paid for in blood.

One of those rules I learned onboard Navy ships is: never run to man overboard or general quarters. There are things hard mounted in passageways, and they do not give. Your cranium, however, does.

I think open carry purists are engaged in intellectual masturbation, just like libertarians are known for doing.

Glen Filthie said...

Perhaps.

Perhaps not.

Imagine: the hapless Marine private is dealing with a bladder infection. His Seargent is a dick and an idiot and won’t excuse him to use the pissoire. So, about to have a personal tragedy, the private has a choice: he can pish himself as a child to feed the ego of an idiot, or he can try and salvage a sliver of self respect in this ludicrous situation... and urinate as a man? Stuff like this happens all the time. Look at your leaders, Aesop. Do you think people like Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters, Barak Obama and your average Donk activists are capable of drafting fair and intelligent laws? Do you think they would, if they could?

You are unintentionally cucking to the left. Think about it: your position is that because stupid people are doing stupid things with guns, that justifies stupid democrats handing down stupid legislation that punishes intelligent and law abiding gun owners. The obvious response to this is... “why are you law makers not doing a single thing to address the criminals that are actually causing the problem?” Instead you want to let them off and hope they stop handing down stupid laws - by voluntarily giving up your rights.

But you go right ahead and signal your virtue, Aesop. How noble and brave you are, standing up to demand your idiots bow down to leftist morons and tyrants... while they encourage and enable theirs. How noble of you to accept responsibility for their violent and stupid failed social experiments that are actually committing the vast majority of gun crime!

And when the cucking and virtue signalling fails... (because it WILL fail, and you know it)... will you make a show of bravely handing in your guns? Tell everyone that you are taking the high road and bravely sacrificing your rights to prevent any escalation of political tensions?

Lest it seem like I am being a dink and a troll - this is exactly what happened in Canada, and exactly how it happened. I did the same thing you guys did - rather than fight with stupid people I went along to get along and thought that they would appreciate my restraint and civility. We all did. And here we are: with a dim bulb fwench whoreson for a PM... who is going to buy back our scarey guns for pennies on the dollar. That’s their idea of being fair with us. And now I have to decide whether I want to go to jail or let that fucktard decide what other rights and property I shouldn’t have.

Cucking out on this won’t end your problems, Aesop. It will only make them worse. You can piss in your pants and humiliate yourself for a seargent that will only find other ways to step on you, or you can piss on his grass... and make sure that everyone, including his bosses, knows why you did it, and why you’ll do it again if some other fuckwit up the totem pole gets the same idea.

At the end of the day, it’s only a sign... that was probably put up by an idiot too.

brinster said...

Go to any shopping center. Notice all the stray shopping carts? Some within 10 feet of one of many corrals. It's a combination of stupidity, inconsideration and laziness. Emblematic of a decline in our civilization.

Anonymous said...

"(that's Marine lingo for relieving one's bladder)"

So, does that mean it doesn't apply to taking a dump?
Sorry, couldn't resist.
_revjen45

Aesop said...

Nice try, Glen, but you don't get to misstate my position, then attack the imaginary things I never said.
Straw Man Fallacy, 20 yard penalty, and loss of possession.

I'm telling you when you act the jackass in public, you open the floodgates of governmental fucktardery, which are barely secured at the best of times.

So let's try fisking your errors, and seeing if you can hack your way through the brambles back to where you departed reason.

1) There is no excuse you can concoct for anyone pissing outside the mess hall. Not even if another private was on fire, and that was the only way you had to put him out. No sale. Ever. Strike One.

2) "Look at your leaders."
nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters, and barack Obama are not my leaders, and never were. Two of them are mere legislators, aka shitweasels, and one is an illegal alien pretender foisted on a hapless nation by a feckless press and wholly amoral political party.
Strike Two.

3) My position is that people who play stupid games are going to win stupid prizes, and will have fuck-all to say in their own defense for their stupidity afterwards. Neither more nor less. The only obvious response is to tell the people who should know better to stop being fuck-ups. Bitching about politicians being assholes, OTOH, is like chiding dogs for pissing on fire hydrants: they can't help it, it's their nature. The only answer for that behavior is voting the bastards out, or getting a crowd, and a stout rope. Which one chooses is becoming less of an issue to me, day upon day. Strike Three.

4) My circus, my monkeys. Their circus, their monkeys. True since forever. That's not virtue signaling, genius. It's calling a jackass a jackass. Sorry if that shell fire landed inside your perimeter, but hey, thanks for sticking up for the fuckwits. Talk about virtue signaling. Strike Four.

5) "will you make a show of handing in your guns?"
a) Non-sequitir. Fail. Own goal safety, and loss of possession.
b) If anyone is ever bold and witless enough to "demand" my guns, they're going to get them. Bullets first.
Strike Five.

6) I am not you, and America is not Canada. You had crown privileges, revocable at the whim of a sovereign, and no rights; we had a sovereign, revocable at the whim of the people. We told your king where to shove that, and then explained it to him in detail. Twice, in fact, just to drive the point well home. Stop projecting. It's nice of you to own up to your own shortcomings, but don't assume others share your faults or act from similar motives, especially when such is contrary to all available evidence. You fucked up, back in the day? How sad for you.
Me?
I have no brief for suffering fools, let alone gladly.
If that comes as news to you, you haven't been paying attention.
Strike Six.

So you're already out, twice, and you're still swinging.

At the end of the day, morons are still morons, but we tell them why they're going to get the shit kicked out of them for being morons, so they can't claim they didn't know where the line was between normal behavior, and being an ass.

That's a sop to our own even-mindedness, because shooting fish in a barrel, or retards trying to find a penny in the corner of a round room, upsets our sense of fair play. Kicking retards in the head just because you can isn't really sporting. Pretty much the same reason I dignified your weak attempt with the favor of a reply. I suggest you explore the utility of a bandage for your leakage problem.

So, did you really want to talk about the weather, or just make chit-chat?

Glen Filthie said...

Perhaps we SHOULD chat about the weather?

Believe it or not, I respect your viewpoint; you may very well have the right of it. I sincerely hope I am wrong and you're right. But playing on the up and square, while our enemies lie, cheat, and use stupid stuff like this to remove our rights? It sticks in my craw to see you give away a moral high ground that you don't necessarily hold. Just understand: it's a wedge issue and it WILL be used against both of us. If you wish to hang separately I get it and respect your right to decide so. You may actually hang before I do, and if so - it serves you right! Give the devil my regards when you see him, and tell him I will be along shortly! :)

If you want to kick the shit out of some morons I will not stand in your way. But... I will not take part either. They never learn and anyways - you're beating up the wrong retards. And - when some Lefty f-wit decides that YOU are a moron that should have the shit kicked out of YOU... guys like me may or may not be there for you. You're in California, aren't you? Shouldn't you know better, by now?

This is what a republic is - the rule of law. If you decide to dismantle that, or let Leftie do it... you do so at your peril. Just look at us up in Canada, or our counterparts in England. You are headed down the same crapper we are, and it's self righteous men like you that hit the flusher. It's too late for us - but maybe you could hit the fan before you come gurgling down after us?

You getting that fall weather down there too? ;P

Anonymous said...

Hate to sound like "Back in the 'old Corps'" but it never would have occurred to me to piss without the express permission, if not direction of one of my Drill Instructors.
I will never know or understand WHY I was sent to Parris Island instead of MCRD, but I was.
A different time and place...
Boat Guy

Aesop said...

It was 96 the other day here.
Fall, here, is what happens to people after too much alcohol. It is not a season.

As to enemies of freedom, they're nothing new. If this becomes a full-out shooting war, doing stupid things will still not be a good idea.
Doing stupid things is never a good idea.

Neither is mollycoddling the inevitable stupid people on one's on side.

And yes, a republic is a rule of law. Idiots, left to themselves, will simply get one's side so hemmed in with law that an actual conflict is over before it starts.
Acting stupid before it goes off nor after is not a weapon in that fight, at any point in time.

The clip I'd post in reply - that I wish was on Youtube - is in The Big Red One, where, in taking a German OP situated inside an insane asylum, one of the lunatics there gets ahold of an MP-40, and as he sprays down the room with full-auto fire, is seen shouting "I am one of you! I am sane!"

Right up until Robert Carradine's character drops him.

There are all sorts of people who are certifiable and have weapons, and think they're on my team, and sane, yet who are neither. They will need to be disabused of that notion in the exact same way as in the movie, and for the same reason: we don't need lunatics with guns thinking they're on our team, and loose with weapons.

There's nothing self-righteous about my position. I'd just rather identify the insane folks up front, before they get good people killed in the confusion.

Evil people I can deal with appropriately as well, if/when it comes to that.
But not by recruiting more lunatics and arming them. The position of the mentally unstable was well-established in English law long before the Second Amendment was penned; it was never intended to include the insane as possessing the right outlined therein.

Fools and lunatics are always the worst examplars, and stupid people make for stupid laws.

That is my point.

(That one ought not to discount, out of hand, the possibility that they're being encouraged on purpose by the same enemies of liberty from the get-go, goes unsaid, but true as well. We already know they won't let any crisis go to waste; look what they do every time some deranged lunatic becomes their new poster child/spokeshole, and their entire excuse for more draconian infractions upon basic liberty. And who, in most cases, were set loose to perform such acts by the very machinations of those enemies beforehand, in reckless disregard for what would follow. Once is happenstance; twice is coincidence; three times is enemy action. Apply that rule of thumb to Open Carry Fucktards as well as mass murderers, and tell me what twenty times is. I'll wait.)

Glen Filthie said...

"Neither is mollycoddling the inevitable stupid people on one's on side...."

Who are they hurting, Aesop? Answer me that, and I might agree with you. If all they do is curdle the milk of some leftist ass hat, or make some screeching gun grabbing whore clutch at her pearls - why not smile and enjoy it? If you want to emulate them, be my guest... but you'll have to pardon my derisive laughter.

"There are all sorts of people who are certifiable and have weapons, and think they're on my team, and sane, yet who are neither..."

As long as that rifle is on its sling and on his shoulder, and he is using trigger discipline … he IS one of us and you should treat him that way. By law, you have to, and that is as it should be. If he turns into a loon with an MP40 - THEN you can drop him. I'll race ya. If you win I will even clean your gun for ya. There is no real difference between carrying a slung rifle, and carrying your handgun in a holster.

You want to talk about incrementalism? Welp, yours is the first step. I remember a hundred years ago, (I think it was du Toit that posted the article on it) - where some kid lost his father in the sandbox. The squaddies did the 21 gun salute over the father's grave, and the kid picked up one of the brass empties after the funeral services. He took it to school, and some hysterical shrekiking cnut of a teacher saw it and called the SWAT team. The kid got put through the wringer again. Those people are demonizing empty brass and children now. I'm sorry, I see no reason to give one inch to those lunatics, and I'll be damned if I kow-tow to them.

There was a meme going round awhile back too - an old black and white photo of some kid back in the 50's. He had grabbed Pop's 12 bore duck gun and took it to school for Show And Tell. The teacher checked it, and made the kid stand up and do his thing. I think we need to get back to that, rather than coddling the shrieking liberal fuckwits... but that's just me. We are taking way too much shit off antigunners and it has to stop. Somewhere. Might as well be here and now.

Unknown said...

Unknown Sailor, those rocks didn't paint themselves. The Marines have it down pat how to square away the many morons of the supposed civilized world. I should amend that; ours is civilized, so damn civilized and off kilter it gives allowance for the lesser to degrade to their natural self much as water finds it's own level. Excuse me, some rocks need painting.
Johnny Adams was exactly correct.
Rick

Robin Datta said...

The Moron Corps is nevertheless the best thing to have around when bullets are a'flyin'. Ahead, behind, to port, to starboard, above & below. Even though it is rumored that in their officer corps the stars are for years of college completed.

Will said...

Glen,
I have vague recollections of walking through town, with my .22 rifle, to reach the local Armory to do some indoor range target practice. No case, no sling, about age 10-12, in a suburban town outside of Philly, PA. Early 60's. No hassles at all. I wasn't the only kid who walked to that Armory for training and practice. Now I read stories where the cops shoot kids carrying BB guns. Times have changed, and not for the better!

Sher Khan said...

I have a growing collection of "California signs" -- examples the warnings posted all over on walls, merchandise, shelves, cars, etc. informing that such items are, in some way or form, possibly dangerous. This seems to be the result of Proposition 65, and bureaucratic creep in some element of the State government, and is my most striking evidence of the kind of moronic policy that afflicts the population there. I show the signs to friends elsewhere, and they cannot believe such idiocy exists. But it does, and it's moving eastward rapidly.....

Anonymous said...

Interesting. Since Article 1 Section 8 of the constitution contains wording for the congress "to provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union" and also wording "to make all Laws which shall be necessary for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers", I'm confused. Let me pull this together. Congress can only pass laws executing powers defined in the constitution" (see Section 8 and amendment 10). Federal police powers are not called out, anywhere. Only the militia can enforce federal law, per the constitution. Subject to what the constitution calls for, congress can only call forth the states militia for enforcement of federal law. That is the only reference in the constitution for federal law enforcement. If congress can violate, with impunity. section 8, they can also violate the first amendment at will, so those two dudes screaming racial s--t have no case. Congress can write any hate speech law they want, if they claim it is carrying into execution any assumed powers. Civics classes in the early 70's HS gave me a foul taste in my mouth when they said the congress could write gun control laws.

cyrus83 said...

At work there is a sign on the men's room stall door with instructions on how to properly use the toilet. Sadly still inadequate, and this isn't freaking San Francisco, nor is it filled with third world arrivals who can't speak English, it's mostly made up of white middle class folks working white collar jobs. Apparently those 6-figure sheepskins they hand out at the fancy schools don't include any tests concerning basic hygiene, grammar, or the ability to read pictures.

I haven't seen any signs yet advising not to drink the toilet water, but doubtless that's coming in a few years, to go with the most ridiculous label warning I've seen, a can of 100% peanuts labeled in big capital letters with the word PEANUTS on the front that also has a warning on the back that the product contains peanuts.

Anonymous said...

"Gotta figure out how to convince stupid people to not breed"

--porn, ever more extreme and isolating
--abortion, anywhere anytime
--homosexuality, from acceptable, to normal, to desirable
--trans mania, castrate the boys when they are young
--radical/intersectional feminism, demonize men, 'grrl power', 'you don't need a man'
--medicate boys/poison boys with environmental exposures, drug them out of normal developmental behaviours, expose them to hormone analogues

Unfortunately for western society, the people TPTB think are the "stupid" ones are the white middle class, the ones who traditionally do most of the work of keeping civilization going. The ones WE think are stupid get encouraged to have more babies and become more dependent on TPTB. This is all according to plan.

nick

Aesop said...

@Anonymous 08:27,

It seems the Fuck-Up Fairy dropped a can of stupid on you. Go wash it off, then try a couple of weeks actual legal research to see all the ways you've rogered the pooch on your uninformed misanalysis of what Congress can and cannot do, under the Constitution.

Start with 232 years of SCOTUS precedent, then work downward through all the Circus court appeals, then all the federal district court rulings, in every district, since the ratification of the Constitution through yesterday, and then maybe take another whack at that.

"Only the militia can enforce federal law, per the Constitution".
Fail.
Prove me wrong: cite the article and section where that exact statement appears in the US Constitution.
When that fool's errand fails, because it appears nowhere therein, stop trying to pass off your wild leaps of illogic as rational analysis. The problem isn't so much that you have no effing idea what you're talking about, the problem is that you don't know you have no effing idea what you're talking about.

The phrase "to make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or any Department or Officer thereof" is wide enough to drive a multi-trillion dollar federal government through, 24/7/365/232.

Lastly, go punch your civics teacher in the throat, for failing to convey to you the depth of your ignorance on this subject.

Congress can write any goddam laws they please. And they do.
The point is they shouldn't write them, shouldn't pass them, the President should veto them rather than signing them, and more importantly, when those laws violate the constitution, failing the previous remedies, they should be ruled unconstitutional by the courts, at any and every level.

What happens in practice is a catalog of failure by every branch, not just the legislative, but thus far, the things which Congress may not do has yet to be discovered, and in practice, what they may do is virtually boundless.

If you don't like gun control laws, a simple question will suffice: how many times have you filed federal suit challenging any such law as unconstitutional?

Show your work.

If you won't defend something, you don't have it.

Aesop said...

@Glen:

"Who are they hurting, Aesop? Answer me that, and I might agree with you."
Virtually all open carry is banned in this state, anywhere inside city limits or populated areas. So is carrying a loaded weapon (which is rather the exact point of a firearm). The former was a direct result of the CA version of Open Carry Fucktards in the Golden State a couple of years back, puling the same stupid horseshit that's going on in Florida now. The latter was the result of The Diversity, in the form of Black Panthers, "monitoring" police who stopped black motorists in black neighborhoods in the 1960s. This was when CA was anything but a Liberal paradise, and they nonetheless nipped that kind of dumb shit in the bud.

That's deprived nearly every citizen of this state of the legal capability to carry the means of effective self defense anywhere outside their own home or business, without the special permission of a CCW, which in the most populous counties of the state, containing 15% of the population of the entire U.S., is printed on unobtanium.

Fucktards have deprived 15% of the United States of self defense, at the precise times and places where it's most need: out and about in society.

Case against being a fucktard: closed, with prejudice. Thanks for playing.

"There are all sorts of people who are certifiable and have weapons, and think they're on my team, and sane, yet who are neither..."

As long as that rifle is on its sling and on his shoulder, and he is using trigger discipline … he IS one of us and you should treat him that way.

No, he's not.
There are some former students from Columbine HS, Sandy Hook elementary, several malls, and any number of other locations, who would disagree with you, if only we could dig them up and re-animate their moldering corpses.

If there's not a riot in progress, or tigers roaming the streets, while the law may not nor should not forbid you toting your shoulder weapons hither and yon, it is nonetheless jackassical in most instances, at this point in history, to do so, and lacking entirely in any rational basis.
This is not 1800, nor even 1950, and wishing it were otherwise doesn't change reality.
My baby brother and I used to have cap gun fights in the streets of Los Angeles, growing up. No one gave a flying fuck.
Now, it would occasion a full SWAT response, helicopters, and neighborhood and school lockdowns, in the exact same neighborhood, doubly so because we were right up the street from two public schools.
That was then, this is now, and times change. The last grizzly bear was killed in the Cahuenga Pass, in what is now the Hollywood Hills, in the 1850s. Walking that territory now with a shotgun or hunting rifle will get you a wee bit different response from those thereabouts than it would have 150 years ago.
Most people with IQs larger than their shoe size get why this is so, and ought to be, without too much heavy pondering necessary.
(cont.)

Aesop said...

(cont.)
There is no real difference between carrying a slung rifle, and carrying your handgun in a holster.
Yes, you're right about that. Both are illegal here, pretty much everywhere.
Just like in Canada.
Tell the class how you got there.

Then, show me the photographs from Tombstone circa 1880 of everyone carrying shotguns and lever actions out to the Birdcage Theatre in their Sunday go-to-meeting dress.
Or people taking their hunting rifles to presidential inaugurations. And shopping at market, indoors or out, loaded for an Indian attack.
You won't find them, because even in frontier times, that was exactly as jackassical there and then as it was now. But Average Joe didn't have to be beaten over the head with a frozen cod and yelled at for being a fucktard to figure that out all by his ownself. That's what's changed.

"You want to talk about incrementalism? Blah blah blah..."
Using jackassical over-reaction doesn't make Open Carry Idiocy any brighter, nor make your case.
You're just trying to fight fucktardation with more fucktardation.
It doesn't work. But you look as stupid as the other side's jackasses for doing it.
Well-played.

"There was a meme going round awhile back too - an old black and white photo of some kid back in the 50's. He had grabbed Pop's 12 bore duck gun and took it to school for Show And Tell. The teacher checked it, and made the kid stand up and do his thing. I think we need to get back to that, rather than coddling the shrieking liberal fuckwits... but that's just me."

Tell me how you turn the clock back 70 years and more.
Show your work.
Tell me how you get there by handing the other side more proof that you're too stupid to be trusted with any guns, when you bring them places you ought not, for no good reason, except to incite panic and piss off people because you can.
How do think that's going to work out for ya in the real world, and without any helpful bong-pipe logic?

Set yourself on fire while wearing a clown wig and floppy shoes instead; at least then, you'll pay the penalty for that sort of assclownery yourself, instead of tarring every other gun owner not that stupid, and without harming everyone's rights by your foolishness.
People open carrying long weapons to make a point are simply proof that Freud's psychoanalysis theories of penile substitutes is occasionally spot-on.
They're not civil rights warriors. They're attention whores with psychotic delusions of grandeur.

Anonymous said...

Aesop, well written rant. You're an artist with our language. I agree 100%. Some comments reinforce your logic. Ohio Guy out.

The Gray Man said...

I think we get it. Everyone is stupid and everyone is a fuckwit. Noted.

Aesop said...

If that's your best take, no, you don't get it.

The Gray Man said...

Calm down, brother. I save my best takes for my pieces at AP. We’re on the same team, and share a common profession, down to the department. Trust me, I get it, even if sometimes I wish I didn’t.

Aesop said...

Then you get that everyone isn't a moron (though we all retain the capability). But certain people are overqualified, and abuse the privilege.