An armed society is a polite society

Robert Heinlein said “An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.”

I have a few things to say about the recent publicized mass shootings (Chicago and the Navy Yard), just random thoughts:

• Most people killed with guns are not killed in mass shootings. Although it’s splashy and attracts media attention, mass shootings are much like airplane crashes. Spectacular, but not statistically interesting. It’s exactly as stupid to demand that we ban airplanes after every crash as to demand we ban guns after every mass shooting.
• Chicago has draconian gun control laws. Yeah, they’re working great.
• The body count in mass shootings goes way down when anyone in the field of fire has a gun. There are multiple examples of this. Trolley Square in Salt Lake City, Tacoma Mall (where the hero got shot, but kept a lot of other people from dying). A ton of other examples are out there. The megachurch where the armed female stopped the shooter, etc.
• In society, our society, not Syrian society, there are a lot more good guys than bad guys. Arm the good guys and the bad guys will STFU.
• Disarming good people as a condition of employment is just advertising “good place to do a mass shooting!”
• Would we be better off as a society if everyone knew there were lots of people around them carrying concealed weapons? We are a society where there are lots of criminals carrying concealed weapons. Think Chicago, you liberal idiots where your idiotic laws have made criminals fearless and good people having to decide every day whether to break the law or take their chances. There are real consequences to real people who are good people to your gun-phobia Nelly-ness. Would we be better off if all those criminals ignoring gun laws had to worry about the problem of all those people like me who might also have a weapon?
• There’s no question that a mass shooter would have a hard time getting to his body count goal if anyone in his field of fire had a gun. Maybe if most citizens carried a gun there’d be bar fights that would turn deadly, or more road rage fatalities, but that’s not what stupid liberals cite as reason to ban guns. Gun banners are all about using the anomalous mass shooting as the talking point. If mass shootings are what we should focus on, then it’s obvious that arming the prospective victims is the right thing to do. Logic, liberal motherfucker, do you speak it? Oh, and as for bar fights and road rage, see the quote at the top of this post.
• It’s obviously a good idea to make a bad guy with a gun worry about whether the targets might have a gun.
• It doesn’t matter whether I have a gun or not if I want to kill someone. That stupid bitch in front of me who missed the light to get on the freeway because she was putting on mascara? I can catch up to her in another 20 seconds and ram her with my vehicle to teach her a lesson she will only get to apply in heaven. She’s annoyed the hell out of hundreds, if not thousands, of people and she’s still alive being a dumb bitch.  A good society is one where she gets to mascara another day.
• I don’t have a gun on me right now, but without 15 seconds of thought, I could go out right now, in my neighborhood, and kill a lot of people without using a gun. We all have lethal force to use intentionally or unintentionally against friends and strangers. Kitchen knives, people, they are lethal.
• And how many of the 15K or so people who get shot and killed every year actually deserved it or did it to themselves?  (The answer is, most of them). Most people who get killed by guns either deserved it or did it to themselves. It might be a good thing if we upped the number of people killed by guns every year. Seriously, the majority of people killed by guns needed to be killed. Guns kill bad people mostly, unlike cars.
• At least a quarter million good people don’t get killed each year because they had a gun to confront a bad guy with a gun. Bad guys are afraid of people with guns.
• If you are in favor of restricting guns, I hope a guy with a gun makes you do what he wants you to do. And you don’t have a gun. Welcome to your self-inflicted Clockwork Orange world, asshole.

Warren Buffett Can’t Understand Normal Thinking

He hired Bono to sing at his granddaughter’s wedding, attended by about 300 people.

I would have thought this was awesome except for Buffett’s faux-populist “my secretary pays a higher percentage in taxes than I do” posturing.

I don’t recall him suddenly paying as big a percentage as she does after that statement.

At the least, him speaking up that way should have indicated that he was signing on to never engage in rich-people wretched excess.

How much do you think he paid Bono to make a moment for his granddaughter? More than you or I will make in a lifetime. Oh, and fuck Bono too, sucking up the stray million or more for 30 minutes of attending a Richie Rich party.

I don’t give a flying fuck that Buffett is folksy, smart, a great investor, humble shmumble or good at bridge.

The most important thing about Buffett is that he is the worst of the crony capitalists. He’s a hypocrite who’s already made his and is trying to change the rules to prevent others from challenging his “top of the world, ma!” attitude.

Oh, and by the way, stupid liberals who might read this, it’s a good thing Warren Buffett pays a lower percentage in taxes than his secretary. Read Thomas Sowell’s Basic Economics. Buffett knows what Sowell says–that’s why Buffett is such a douchebag. Buffett is trying to keep anyone else from reaching his lofty perch.

The House of Cards

Netflix has this as a minseries about politics starring Kevin Spacey. Watched the first episode and liked it a lot and then read an article about the British 12-part series on which it was based.

The article said the Brit-series was much nastier, much better than the American remake.

The British series is also on Netflix.

So I had to decide–would I prefer to watch the American big-budget series first and be surprised, or watch the edgier Brit series first and get the surprises?

I haven’t watched the American/Netflix-produced series yet, but just finished the Brit series.

Sight unseen, the American version, I made the right decision, to watch the Brit version first.

Made in 1994, it’s pretty relevant. Cyprus instead of Syria, other than that, all things seem about the same.

Really, watch the Brit series first. It’s nasty, cynical, horrifying, persuasive about every cockroachy thing you’ve ever suspected about politics, though I was less than convinced by the ending. More than that, I cannot say without giving stuff away. It was great fun.

I will be interested to see how the American series goes, and, in advance, am pretty sure it will have a pretense of jadedness that will go soft in the end.