By reason of mental defect

The NRA's position is that we can't prohibit anyone from owning a gun, lest someone be denied a right he should have. They may not state this position directly, but it's obvious in their unwillingness to consider any new restrictions and their clear desire to remove all existing restrictions.

But...

James Yeager owns guns:

“I’m telling you that if that happens, it’s going to spark a civil war, and I’ll be glad to fire the first shot. I’m not putting up with it. You shouldn’t put up with it. And I need all you patriots to start thinking about what you’re going to do, load your damn mags, make sure your rifle’s clean, pack a backpack with some food in it and get ready to fight.”

The CEO concluded: “I’m not fucking putting up with this. I’m not letting my country be ruled by a dictator. I’m not letting anybody take my guns! If it goes one inch further, I’m going to start killing people.”

The State of Tennessee yanked this raging moron's handgun carry permit, but I haven't heard a report that they confiscated his weapons.

Alex Jones owns fifty guns:



There's no way these psychos are sane enough to be trusted with a weapon that can kill from a distance greater than 10 feet. Hell, we probably should seize their kitchen knives and their hammers.

These are the people we know about, who haven't yet done anything. But, shit, you'd never say about James Yeager or Alex Jones, "Well, I'm so surprised he went postal. There were just no signs of it - he was so quiet and unassuming."

Clearly, there are gun nuts in the sense that I'm a sports nut. And then there are gun nuts, as in too effing crazy to possess any gun loaded with anything more volatile than tap water.

Acceptable breakage

The NRA can't honestly evade responsibility for the legal environment in which a known lunatic like Kenneth Roop was able to build an arsenal of 14 weapons and was able to retain his concealed carry permit until he executed someone for the minor civil infraction of trespassing.

Roop's neighbors knew he was unstable. They had little power to keep their children safe from Roop, other than abandoning the public street in front of his house. They walked with a neighbor after Roop began to stalk her.

The local cops knew. They did nothing other than put the onus on Roop's neighbors.

This man should not have been permitted to have guns. At all.

The NRA's standard solution, more guns!, would not have worked in this case, even in the fevered imagination of Wayne LaPierre. Maybe full military tactical gear 24/7!

There will surely be dishonest evasions. Mitt Rmoney is trying one that I see frequently from wingnuts in comment threads: If there's any means of killing that's not regulated, no matter how inefficient compared to gunfire, then guns shouldn't be regulated.

Our rightful place - American exceptionalism

The weirdest thing is that Mitt Rmoney's insult tour is actually attractive to the wingnuts. They want America in first place, especially to be the world's biggest baddest asshole. Rmoney can restore us to that role.

(h/t Raw Story)

The bankers you have

I've been trying to figure out why Obama hasn't moved more aggressively to assert government's role. What!???, you may say. He's borrowing and spending trillions.

His lack of aggressiveness is that he's handing the money over to the same people who made this diarrhea soup, as if he expects them to change their minds and their hearts about how the markets ought to work and what their cut should be. He should be clawing back money from them instead of making whole their bonuses, their stupid investments, and their shareholders (o.k., not whole exactly).

The credit markets are still blocked because everyone knows that what Atrios calls the big shitpile is still hugely overvalued, and the financial institutions want us to take the hit instead of them.

For some reason, though, Obama and Geithner believe that we need these people to run the system and to unwind all the deals. They think they're going to economic war with the bankers they have, not the bankers they wish they have.

Then there's the fear that wingnuts will scream socialism even louder. So what! Embrace it, tell them it's temporary, and then make it happen. Nationalize failed banks and financial institutions. They don't seriously think they're going to convince the idiots that Newt Gingrich is fomenting anger among, do they?