Gun in 60 Seconds

As we slowly drag some of America's less-evolved citizens toward the reality that the Second Amendment is not Holy Writ, I've noticed a number of very specific bad debating tactics that the NRA likes to use.

There's all the usual suspects: attacking the messenger ("you liberals hate guns! And the Constitution!"), the slippery slope argument ("if they ban assault weapons, next they'll ban all guns!"), and on and on.

Most of them are pretty easy to combat, if you know what you're talking about. And let's be real: if you are required to accept "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" without any limitations, then the Second Amendment isn't restricted to guns, either. Nuclear weapons are "arms," and therefore all citizens should be allowed to own them.

Since even the most conservative member of the Supreme Court says that there can, in fact, be limitations on gun ownership, maybe it's time for somebody to put a muzzle on Wayne LaPierre and let the adults talk.

But on that subject -- knowing what you're talking about -- there is one little thing that bothers me. In blogs and on talk shows, I keep hearing people making obvious, blatant mistakes that occasionally get them in trouble. So let's put a little reality into our side of the argument. Here's some little facts relevant to the gun debate that you should probably know.

Guns aren't difficult to understand, nor are they difficult to use. Literally any idiot can learn to use one, and most of them can learn to use them very well. (Here's where I want to follow up with "...for example, look at the Marines," but my son is a Marine now, and I've promised to be good.) However, just like any other hobby enthusiast, there is a certain amount of specialized knowledge involved.

To put it another way, gun nuts are like LARPers or comic book geeks: they have specific terminology, and a knowledge of trivia that is unique to their hobby, and if you get any of it wrong, they'll scream like little bitches and try to say that you don't know anything about the subject.

Trust me: having carried one for 21 years, I'm reasonably familiar with the subject, and it isn't rocket science. So here's the least you need to know.

Always be sure that you're using the right terminology. We want an "assault weapons ban," not a ban on assault rifles.

There's are important reasons for this, and most of them have to do with the legal definitions of these two terms. See, an "assault weapon" is a generic term, and can be expanded or contracted to cover a multitude of sins.

An assault rifle, on the other hand, has a very specific definition (and yes, I'm using Wikipedia here - it's the most accessible source I found, and it is at least getting this part of the debate right):

An assault rifle is a selective fire (selective between automatic, semi-automatic, and burst fire) rifle that uses an intermediate cartridge and a detachable magazine....

Assault rifles are categorized in terms of using an intermediate cartridge power that is between light machine guns firing full power cartridges, which are intended more for sustained automatic fire in a light support role, and submachine guns, which fire a lower powered pistol cartridge rather than a rifle cartridge.

Fully automatic fire refers to an ability for a rifle to fire continuously until the magazine is empty and no rounds remain; "burst-capable" fire refers to an ability of a rifle to fire a small yet fixed multiple number of rounds with but one press of the trigger; in contrast, semi-automatic refers to an ability to fire one round per press of a trigger.

I could go on about the difference between the full-auto sear (a little metal piece on the inside of the M-16 that allows it to keep firing until you run out of ammo), and the burst-fire sear (which I thought was an awesome innovation when it came out), but all you really need to know is that replacing a sear isn't difficult.

More than that, though, there are conversion kits that make it even easier. So don't let anybody try to tell you that it takes some kind of mystic metalwork to convert a civilian AR-15, which is an assault weapon, into a functional assault rifle. A couple of pliers, a small punch (I usually ended up using a small screwdriver) - there are specialized tools that make working on an M-16 easier (like a barrel wrench), but damned few of them are required.

There are other terms that drive the gun hobbyists crazy: the bullet is the metal bit that flies out of the gun. The whole thing, including the casing, the powder and everything, is a shell, a round, or a cartridge. Never call it a bullet.


For some reason, this makes them crazy (or "crazier, maybe).

Also, don't say "clip," say "magazine." This is another of those stupid pedantic things that make spittle fly across the room. A clip can feed ammo into a magazine - a magazine feeds ammo into a weapon. If you really care enough to read about it, go here - but otherwise, just avoid it.

They also can get really cranky about the word "gun" - it's a very generic term that covers everything from handguns to Howitzers. Just so you know.

(Overall, I find the whole thing funny - it's like listening to comic nerds screaming "You don't even know the relationship between the Golden Age and Silver Age Superman! Why should we listen to you about anything?" But I find a lot of things funny, even when nobody else does.)

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(If you want to get even farther into the argument, here's a piece I ran across in gathering links for this post. I tend to avoid DailyKos just out of habit, but the writer gets into a lot of the tactics and terminology that might come in handy for somebody.)

Mixed Nuts

I just sent this letter to my local fish wrapper. I've included a link at the end to my most recent Huffington Post essay:

I just read the AP story about Conservapedia.com, the Bible rewriting project proposing to erase the effects of "liberal academics" who have "watered down" Jesus by studying the ancient languages of the Bible. The linguists, one supposes, are all secret Satanists and cannot be trusted.

The group's founder, Andy Schlafly, is the son of Phyllis Schlafly. The apple has not fallen far from the tree; these are the same John Birchers and reactionary right-wingers of yore. Conservapedia is just a new offshoot of that poisonous tree, and Schlafly is the fruit of fringe insanity. The poor kid was raised to believe this gorp.

Over the decades, a nebulous root-system of direct-mail lists fed the paranoia of the stupid and "informed" the world of AM talk radio. Toxic to democracy, this monster has flourished in the age of the internet and media consolidation. Its tentacles pull the mixing-board levers of Fox News Channel, where Glenn Beck spews that same pollution into the mainstream of public opinion.

Birthers, death panels, black helicopters, lizard people, secret UN armies in Nebraska...where do you think these idiots come from? A majority of Republicans today actually believes the president was born in Kenya. How do you think that happened?

Now they want to turn the Bible itself into a weapon of culture war. This was exactly what Jesus meant when he said there would be many who cry "Lord, Lord!" that are too wicked for him to recognize.

But what I want to know is: given their long record of tinfoil-hat bizzarro fearmongering, how do these wackaloons and hoopleheads still merit the fair-handed attention of "liberal" media?

I would like to see journalists call them by their proper names: shills, hacks, and mixed nuts.

The bow that shook the world

Actually it shook very little outside the Fox's den other than the behinds of the Wingnut Obama haters when President Obama did the traditional Japanese equivalent of the European handshake with the Emperor of Japan. Inside the borrow however, it was immediately dubbed the Bow-Gate in the tired old idiom of "let's get 'em back for what they did to Nixon."

Yes, we've all seen pictures of Don Rumsfeld bowing and shaking hands with Saddam Hussein, and we've seen too many pictures of George Bush lovingly caressing the Saudi Royals and all but making out with Prince Bandar -- not to speak of the Andrea Merkel supergaffe. What we haven't seen, except on blogs like The Reaction, is Richard Nixon bowing to Mao Zedong as though he were the Emperor of China.

Fox Folk may have short and selective memories, but the Internet remembers. To give him due credit, Nixon's little bow opened up an era of detente, increased cooperation and a liberalization of human rights in China. The internet remembers.

The unbearable Liberalness of Truth

Rush Limbaugh may get his wish and what used to be a viable, if flawed democracy may just disappear into the kind of thing that used to go on in Michael Vick's back yard. Barking, snarling bared tooth and bloody clawed madness is everywhere, in the wild, outraged e-mail I got last night showing Barack Obama "refusing" to salute the flag on Veteran's day, to a new attempt to propagandize small children into supporting mad-dog mentality and bigoted mockery against liberal political figures, Jews, and gays. Even Geraldo Rivera, of all people, is calling Fox and Gretchen Carlson "preposterous and irresponsible" for insisting that trial by jury is dangerous. That may be the first time I've caught him in an understatement.

It doesn't help any more to refer the hoax spreaders to Snopes.com or FactCheck.org, since there are ten thousand web sites telling us that these sites and the facts they cite are wildly biased against the Gospel ofObamahate and never mind the unimpeachable sources they reference. Fox news? The voice of God, of course and we never question it. I don't think we have any chance to survive it.

It's chic to disparage American products. We can't make cars Americans say, but in China? They'd really rather have a Buick and the US is seen as an innovative technological leader with a competitive advantage over the rest of the world. We have the best health care we insist although our nation's capitol has a higher infant mortality rate thanSri Lanka . Socialism and terrorism are our biggest fears yet acetaminophen alone kills many times more people in a year than have ever died in all the terrorist attacks on our country while the healthiest, happiest, most prosperous, free countries offering the most opportunity for advancement are described as Socialist, third world hell-holes by people who can't find Denmark on a map.

The nativists are restless, the bigots are howling like banshees, the Christianists are speaking in tongues while we roll our eyes and babble about birth certificates, our Muslim president and Sarah the Rogue Palin who wants to lead us into a future although she insists the end is coming any day and traffic accidents are the result of witchcraft. Millions of my countrymen are as out of touch with reason and objectivity as anyone languishing in a padded cell ever was and I'm without hope. There is a tide of hate and madness in the lives of men and countries and I'm beginning to think we're surfing it straight to hell.

Ugly American

Have we become a nation of skateboard and spray can street brats who live just to piss off the adults and piss on everything we can just for the fun of it; laughing with idiot glee while impressing our idiot friends?

Maybe not all of us, but certainly the Tea Baggers and the third of us who think Sarah Palin would make an outstanding president and most assuredly the idiot CNN reporter who thought she could get noticed by wearing a T-shirt with the president of the US dressed as Mao Zedong in a Red Army uniform -- not at some idiotic Republican rally, not in a high school parking lot, but in the streets of Shanghai and while Barak Obama was making a historic visit to convince the world's largest country we're rational and dependable and trustworthy.

That's right - look at me folks, I'm an American and I'm an offensive and ignorant twit! One wonders at what feelings such a spectacle elicits in the Chinese. Mao, after all and after all the horrors, is still a hero of the "anti-Japanese War" and the man who ended much of the horror of Chinese history, albeit by instituting his own horror. Still, his picture looks down at Tian-an Men from the gates of the forbidden city.

Is this statement meant to say: "look, our leader is just like your great founding father, which might be an insult? Perhaps it means "look, your leader was a monster and so is ours" which would be a very confusing concept since drawing any parallels or valid comparisons between these two men is the stuff of foil hatted and straight jacketed ravers -- or unscrupulous reactionary propagandists. What must it seem like when a representative of the country that has everything China wants mocks the system that gave it to them by comparing it to the dark days of starvation and violent oppression?

Who knows, but if we hark back only a handful of months to when criticizing the US or it's leaders while abroad was considered treason - at least when non-Republicans did it, it would be confusing to anyone. No Chinese thinks Obama has anything to do with Communism, much less with the dictatorship of the Party or the Gang of Four or the Cultural Revolution.

Emily Chang, a Chinese based CNN reporter was hassled by Shanghai police who had put a ban on such display in order to avoid offending America. That an American news network would make an effort to openly flaunt it rather than some anti-American local must have seemed as strange as it seems to me, but perhaps no stranger than the tokens and tags of the domestic brat culture with its graffiti, self mutilation and 'attitude.'

Nice job Emily. Thanks for reminding the world that we're as sophomoric and scatter-brained as we ever were and the world can feel safe with us, our massive nuclear arsenal, our worshipful militarism, our xenophobia and the joy we feel in our disrespect for everything and everyone.

Satan Lives In Alabama

Those of you who know me from Osborne Ink are aware that I blog too much already, but this land-bound writer cannot resist the siren song of the (O)CT(O)PUS. This being my first post for The Swash Zone, I suppose an introduction and mission statement is in order.

Beginning with the personal: I discovered my liberalism on the day in 1980 that my third-grade teacher Mrs. Huffington (an ironic name) took my incomplete pencil-drawing of a dragon and destroyed it amid senile mutterings of Satanic influence. My inspiration -- a deluxe vinyl LP of Rankin-Bass' The Hobbit, including storybook -- was confiscated for a day. Mrs. Huffington's proud ignorance -- indeed, one could call it arrogance -- also led her to dispatch the classroom's sole Jehovah's witness to the office every day so she could lead the room in the Pledge of Allegiance.

When my father was informed, his reaction was as near to ballistic as I have ever seen from a northeastern liberal. This gentle soul, later ordained an Episcopal deacon and deeply involved in prison ministry programs, tore the flabby educator a new metaphorical orifice.

This incident, like many others, made it difficult for me or my family to maintain a social circle outside of the small academe of Northwest Alabama. We were transplants from the north -- and from a way of thinking that clashed with southern culture.

My family hails from both sides of the Mason-Dixon line; my maternal ancestors escaped Savannah ahead of Sherman's army, resettling in Missouri and then New England. But my paternal line is of pure Yankee extraction, including one of the early presidents of Harvard. I am the direct descendant of men who fought the bloody British at Bunker Hill and invented American higher education.

From an early age, then, I felt called to rebel against the tyranny of Teh Stupid™. As the 1980s progressed, Mrs. Huffington's attitudes were endemic to Alabama and the conservative movement as a whole. The voices raised in opposition to Harry Potter books today come from the same people who picketed The Last Temptation of Christ in 1987 and sued the state to have my American history textbook replaced with a more "Christian-friendly" (read: less informative) one.

Before I was even old enough to vote, I was rebelling through action and opinion. My first letter to the editor was published two years before I had a driver's license. One year later, mine was the second signature establishing the Alabama chapter of the ACLU -- right below my father's. Needless to say, I became inured to the harshest criticisms long ago.

While it may seem a myopic product of a provincial life, the sum total of my experiences has led me to form an Alabama Theory of Wingnuttery™. To wit:

All wingnuttery originates in Alabama.

Indeed, a strong case can be made that no original wingnuttery has been formulated outside the state of Alabama in over a century. Every John Bircher tract, every Phyllis Schlafly speech, every Michelle Malkin blog post has a prologue in this state. Could I only share a scrapbook of op-ed clippings with you, you'd find that the teabaggery of August is perfectly predicted by stupidity published in 1989.

I live on top of the epicenter of all wingnuttery.

Dangerous? Perhaps. Perhaps my presence here is a karmic punishment. Because this is the second thing you must know about Alabama: one cannot escape it. Like a black hole, Alabama exerts its own special force on sons and daughters. Many friends have noted that as far as we can get away (as far as the other side of the world) Alabama inevitably sucks us back in. It isn't that we want to return, but that we find ourselves back in the very towns where, as teenagers, we plotted escape.

Wingnuttery produces its own gravity.

It has mass. Like the black hole at the center of a galaxy, it is the circling drain-hole of rational thinking. It is a malevolent intention dressed up in the lamb's skin of piety. It seeks to turn us all into illiterate peasants reciting Bible verses that we don't understand. Wingnuttery is worse than mere evil: it is malignant, aggressive, and aimed directly at the foundations of scientific civilization. It is, in a word, Satanic.

Satan lives in Alabama. I live in hell.

They say the devil hides in the details; the state constitution here is the longest legal document in the world. Longer than Moby Dick and the King James Bible put together. Written with the intention of denying education to black children, today it manages only to accomplish the mission of centralizing all decisions in the state capitol where our legislature meets for 30 days a year. Establishing the most regressive tax system in America, our state constitution has been amended more than 800 times.

And there you have it. I make these claims not from ego, but from the sad horror of Dante.

IS ROBERT ELIGIBLE TO VOTE? HELP WANTED.

I need your help to determine if Robert, the Conservative, is qualified to vote. It seems Robert has very strong opinions about who should have, or not have, the right to vote. He brings terms like “apathy” and “uninformed” into his discussion but fails to quantify what measures of “apathy” or “informed” should apply.

In applying an arbitrary standard to voter eligibility, what Robert is really saying is this: “Let me decide.” Fair enough! If he wants to assign himself this role, he should understand that “two can play this game.” So let us judge Robert by his own standards and determine whether or not he should have the right to vote.

Here is the gist of a conversation I had with Robert earlier this week:

Robert:  I belong to the crowd that doesn't want everyone to vote.

(O)CT(O)PUS:   Lucky for the rest of us, there are laws to protect us from people like you.

Robert:   I wouldn't deny anyone the right, of course, but Saturday elections would mean that many people who have such apathy to the process that they wouldn't vote during the week would cast votes on Saturday.

(O)CT(O)PUS:   And who are you to make this judgment? Who are you to decide when one votes or who gets the right to vote? By this definition, you would disenfranchise anyone at the drop of a hat for failing to meet any narrow-minded criteria you can think of.

Robert:   It is sad that so many people are uninformed on issues.

(O)CT(O)PUS:  Like you! By this standard, you should not have the right to vote either. What makes you think your opinion or your vote is more worthy than mine or the next person. Do you think you are smarter than me? Or more educated than me? Or more democracy-worthy than me? Or more entitled than me? Obviously you have no concept of equal rights, equal protection, and equal access under Law.

Robert:  I think that half the people who vote now would do us all a favor by staying at home.

(O)CT(O)PUS:  Then do us a favor and stay home yourself.  For someone who claims to value liberty and freedom, you have a damn strange concept of what these mean. Or are you one of George Orwell's … pigs who would have our Constitution restated to mean: "Some animals are more equal than others." Damn, you are even worse than stupid!

I have extended an invitation to Robert to visit our humble shores and take our voter eligibility test. That is why I prevail upon you, my fellow creatures of the deep and pilots of the waves. What would you ask Robert to determine his eligibility to vote?

My question for Robert begins with this 48-second segment from a Sarah Palin speech:



Fruit fly research does sound a bit silly … especially for the likes of Joe-Six-Pack and Joe-the-Plumber.  But a recent study shows that “Drosophila” fruit flies have an abundance of neurexin, a protein essential for proper neurological function.  This discovery has important applications in autism research.

Of course, everyone knows that Sarah Palin has a “special needs” child, and it would seem hypocritical of Petite Sarah to debunk this research. So here is my voter eligibility question for Robert: Read this paper and give us your opinion as to why funding for this research should be cut.

Next?  My compatriots above and below the waves, can you think of any voter eligibility questions you would like to ask Robert, the Conservative?