Snowflakes in Hell

Just as the President said, he would have, he would have signed [the assault weapons ban] if it came to his desk, and so would have I.- Presidential Hopeful Mitt Romney on Meet the Press 12/16/2007

I will not vote for Mitt Romney under any circumstance. If the choice is between Mitt and Hillary, I stay home. We must defeat Mitt in the Primary. It’s an imperative. Scroll down on this post to the part titled “On Gun Control.” Mitt was singing a different tune in October. I’m guessing these latest shootings have made him think that it’s better for him to support a new assault weapons ban.

Folks, this guy has to be stopped. He’s truly a weasel and no friend of honest gun owners. He will turn on us in a minute if the polls tell him he should. I urge everyone to get behind a real friend like Fred Thompson or Ron Paul.

UPDATE: He’s also bragging about an NRA endorsement he never received.

UPDATE: Bruce has more.

Some people seem to have way too much time on their hands for Christmas decorations.  There tastefully decorating your house for the holidays, and then there’s going way way overboard.  Basic rule of thumb: if PECO is having to pull a few extra control rods out of the reactor in order to keep your house lit for the holidays, you’re probably going overboard.

Another thing that really creeps me out are those giant inflatable Christmas characters.  In my neighborhood we have a Homer Simpson, several giant sized Frosty the Snowmen, a Santa Spongebob, and if that wasn’t going far enough, there’s the new ones that blow snow all around inside them.  Every time I see one of those it makes me upset that live grenades are illegal.  Not to be outdone by the life size snow globes, the inflatable decoration industry has been making their inflatables even larger.  If Frosty gets any bigger, I’m going to start panicking that the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man has finally come to destroy my neighborhood.

When it comes to Christmas deocration, I’m definitely of the KISS (Keep it Simple Stupid).  Less time decorating means more time at the range, so you can stay sharp for the day inflatable Christmas decorations come alive and try to kill us all.

Dave Kopel has an editorial in the Rocky Mountain News this week which echoes some of the sentiments I talked about in this post, back before the shooting in Colorado.  Dave Hardy points to Loren Coleman, who has studied these things.  I think there’s little doubt that media coverage of these events encourages future killers.

One thing I noticed about the Colorado shootings is that the courageous actions of Jeanne Assam shifted some of the media attention away from the killer and onto her.   I’m hoping that her willingness to talk to the media, and tell her story, will put these sociopaths on notice that churches aren’t the soft targets they imagine.  I am hoping that the publicity Assam’s actions have gotten will mean we won’t see a mass shooting in another church for quite some time.

This reiterates the importance of carrying wherever you go.  The life you save may not be just your own, and the people around you.  It may also serve to shatter the fantasy of these deranged people by shifting the attention away from them, and onto you, the person who stopped them, and to let them know their intended prey might not be so helpless as they think.  That kind of attention might be unwelcome, but I find the idea of a copycat killer more upsetting.

Ahab reviewed “I Am Legend”:

A little backstory first: this is the 3rd attempt to adapt the novel I am Legend into a movie. To be candid, the first two attempts sucked. “The Last Man on Earth” and “The Omega Man” were perfect examples of Hollywood past taking a good story and raping it to death and then defecating on the corpse.

I think we’ll have to revoke his NRA membership for saying bad things about a Charlton Heston movie ;)

It looks like the Chambersburg Public Opinion believes that guns and polling places don’t mix. While I don’t find their argument to be entirely unreasonable, the Pennsylvania Legislature could have chosen to make polling places off limits for carrying firearms if they were concerned enough about this issue. The fact that is, that the legislature chose not to do so.

The incident with Mr. Rotz is not really about public policy, it’s what the law is, and whether or not Sheriff Wollyung was within his authority to revoke this man’s license to carry a firearm. I don’t believe the sheriff was, as Mr. Rotz was not doing anything unlawful at the time, and asserted his legal right to be armed at the polling place. If Sheriff Wollyung does not like the idea of a man carrying in a polling place, he’s free to lobby the legislature to forbid the practice. Abusing his authority by making and example out of one man, and revoking his right to be armed without just cause, was not the proper or just course of action to take.