Tuesday, March 29, 2005

Joy, and Danger, of Witlessness

The family of a bicyclist slain by a cougar at Southern California's Whiting Wilderness Park is suing the state, that would be us private individuals who have taxes extorted from us.

"Because the county installs signs warning about mountain lions — and rattlesnakes — at the entrances to all its wilderness parks," The Los Angeles Times intones, "it's likely Reynolds knew there was some chance of a mountain lion encounter."

The Times actually argues for individual responsibility for one's own safety!

Yep, the Park Rules are posted.

But I wonder why the editorial doesn't mention the one that says "Possession or use of firearms or weapons is prohibited."

Yeah, I wonder.

Tough on Guns, Weak on Brains

Mark Benjamin of Salon.com thinks frivolous lawsuits should be employed against the gun industry.

Mark Benjamin of Salon.com wants BATFU to be able to harrass dealers out of existence.

And perhaps most importantly, Mark Benjamin of Salon.com wants the government to be able to declare people terrorists and deny them their right to keep and bear arms without due process.

In other words, Mark Benjamin of Salon.com is yet another in a long line of boringly unoriginal anti-gun Establishment propagandists.

Correspondent Brian Naylor shared his letter to Salon.com with WarOn Guns. Among his pithy observations:

"You go on to raise all the VPC/Brady cornerstone spectres - 'TEC-9 submachine guns' and 'street-sweepers.' You use the all-too-familiar VPC tactic of purposefully confusing fully-automatic M-16s with semi-automatics. You fail to mention that the armor-penetrating rounds for the recently fearsome FN 5.7 are not available to the public at all.

"You continue to pretend that there is a gun show 'loophole' when there is no such thing. You even weigh in on the VPC's latest manufactured boogeyman, the .50BMG, with their canonical list of imagined horrors. As far as I can tell, the only VPC bullet points you failed to hit were the use of the phrases, 'spray bullets' and 'blood in the streets.'

"Do they actually send out a list of talking points, or did you go to the trouble to cull them all yourself? I'm not sure which would be worse."


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