The awesome Texas legislature in Austin just passed a bill that will allow anyone who currently has a concealed weapon license to “to openly tote their handguns in a shoulder or hip holster.” This will allow all Texas males to fulfill their childhood fantasies of living in a Looney Tune state.
Next up, they can go restore order in the Middle East.
Pax Americana, now and forever.
So, is it the Texas legislature that’s half-cocked or the folks that will be enjoying their new gun rights?
Sometime, people are fully cocked.
Maine — that nice blue state up in the corner — is about to pass permit-less concealed carry.
Did you hear about what that Teabagger governor is up to?
what?
I gotta tell y’all…that “nice blue state up in the corner” isn’t so nice. Bet on it. I spent some time there recently with a country detective in the tourist/seacoast zone up Rt. 1 north of Portland, and friends…it is rough up there. His stories about the lowlife hiding behind that “nice white houses and lobster-friendly harbors” front are devastating. A tidal wave of child abuse, domestic violence, speed/heroin-crazed outlaws and general low IQ misfits of all sorts is breaking over the supposedly “nice” Maine shores, and it’s worse inland. And he’s a <good</u> cop. His view of the police force in general is grim as well.
Think well everywhere in this country. It’s not just Maine and Texas, Florida and wherever else you want to complain about. It’s in the big cities, the not-so-big cities, it’s in the suburbs and it’s in the countryside as well. Guns, guns and more guns, most of them bought by people who are afraid for their lives. Afraid of the crazies and afraid of the criminals. Afraid of the police and the government in general, too. Justifiably. Bet on that as well. We have to heal the country, not just the gun laws.
AG
Thank you, Arthur.
You’re talking about my students, and their families…
Where do you teach, Davis X?
AG
Far enough from salt water for the lobster license plate to be a joke.
Pick your favorite used-to-be-a-mill town. Where the only things left are the courthouse and the hospital.
Ah. The real black fly backcountry. I know it well.
AG
Sounds like Maine has more than a little in common with Alaska. A female friend, speaking of relocating there, shared that the male to female gender ratio is encouraging for single women. Then she said, “Alaska — where the odds are good and the good are odd.”
Nothing wrong with Maine that a flourishing economy based on more than being “The Help” to wealthy people from away wouldn’t fix.
Ask a Mainer, and he’ll tell you what his town used to make, from Port-a-cribs to combat boots.
We cannot possibly go back to a manufacturing economy anywhere in the United States…not just in Maine…until the jobs that Bill Clinton sold down the river and out of the country are returned to us.
Ross Perot tried very hard to tell the U.S. citizenry about this danger way back in 1992 as he “debated” the united PermaGov front of Bill Clinton and George Bush I during the presidential (
s)election process of that year.There it is. And there it was. The media crowded Perot right out of the picture…just as they did Howard Dean and Ron Paul in later years…and it is my impression that the intelligence services made threats that also helped him to decide to get out of the way.
So it goes.
Like I said. Down like a motherfucker until it hits bottom and breaks up.
Like the U.S.S.R only richer.
Watch.
The only questions that remain are:
Who will be our Yeltsin?
And…when?
AG
I think permit-less concealed carry has been the law in Vermont for quite some time. Democrats do very well there. Bernie Sanders is fairly-pro firearms for a lefty.
I just got back from a trip to Alabama. It was very jarring to see the door signs, say on Panera or Walmart, “No weapons allowed beyond this point.” My reaction was always, “Duh! Of course!” I will say that people and drivers in particular were very polite, even to the car with “Land of Lincoln” plates. The only place consistently rude and driving recklessly on this 2000 mile round trip were in Illinois. The contrast was striking. For all you East coast types, no, Illinois drivers are no worse than NYC or NJ drivers, yes to Boston.
One of the very real results of these guns everywhere/anywhere/at all times laws passed in recent years is that they will be very very difficult to undo, even when and if the mood of the locals shifts to a more sane and gunless society.
Also, too, we Southerners can be awfully polite before pulling that trigger. But the politiness does tamp down the tendency to violence that always lurks under the surface. And the ease of access to guns puts them into the hands of young and disadvantaged and largely minority youth who don’t have the judgement to not use them.
Three evenings ago we had a shooting in an alley between a nearby large grocery store and the only movie multiplex theater in town. Two rival groups of young minority teens had a fracas. Everyone’s running scared because it happened in the suburban North. But when the only other movie theaters in less appealing neighborhoods are shuttered because of the selfsame incidents, this is what will inevitably happen.
We are ALWAYS running from our problems.
“Also, too, we Southerners can be awfully polite before pulling that trigger”
I’ve noticed that in Texas, too. Quoting a very good (now deceased) friend born in Texas. “If you ask a Texan for the shirt of his back, he may well give it to you. If you demand it, he may very well shoot you.”
Another of his quotes,” When I was a boy in Texas, I played with black and brown boys also. It wasn’t until we moved to Michigan that anyone told me that I should not be doing that.”
I don’t believe the old saying that an armed society is a polite society. I believe the opposite is true. If the general populace is armed, it takes the standard police force from pistols to rocket launchers. We’ve already seen that.
An armed society is an angry, paranoid, self-important society. Those who choose to arm themselves and make it known are deliberately provoking conflict. It’s intimidation, and My Gun’s Bigger than Your Gun will rule the day.
It’s a stupid path to take.
Stupid, but instinctual for hormone saturated males. It’s a well observed phenomenon of primate males. The veneer of civilization is sometimes very slim. The surprise is not that frat boys date-rape. The surprise is that most young men don’t.
Agreed. And given the nature of the human brain; the way the reptilian brain overtakes the cerebral cortex during times of intense stress, it’s remarkable more people aren’t killed and wounded by guns.
Two people get into a shouting match pursuant to a divorce-related visit with a child, or over politics in a bar, or over a parking spot in a parking lot — what could possibly go wrong?
Popular, though.
Yeeeeee haawwwwww. Blam. Blam. Blam. Blam. Blam. Blam.
Anyone over 50 grew up on cartoons with that sound and likely the westerns that inspired them. Anyone over 30 likely had toy guns as a kid — unless their parents didn’t believe that girls could be cowgirls.
Wayne LaPierre has been paid big bucks to ensure that as many as possible never outgrow these toys.
But don’t think that the Huey P. Newton Brigade of the New Black Panther Party or #blackopencarry will be allowed to get too popular.
The tide will turn quickly when the demographic trends complete the minoritization of white America.
In Richard Petty NASCAR country, you see gun shops, loan offices, and pawn shops operating out of the same building, sometimes the same store/office. Last time I saw how many of them there were in Randolph County NC it made me wonder it guns weren’t a new form of local money that functions like art does for the Wall Street worthies. And how many pickup trucks are paid for with three Glocks, a Smith & Wesson, two Berettas and six random Saturday night specials for change.
There is something more than cultural derangement, political hedging, and hippie-punching going on with this rush to ever larger numbers of guns. But I’m not sure that this gun-loan-pawn system exists outside the Carolinas.
But if I were a Georgia preacher, I’d be mighty careful who I decided to “church”. Hellfire and damnation better be general or not at all in those sermons. Or rerun those “God of second chances” sermons.
Were it were only Texas. You might see pressure on Ronald Reagan’s first major accomplishment. The one motivated by Huey Newton. Back before the NRA was the NRA.
Yiu write:
Oh, Tarhee.!!!
I am here to tell you that it does!!!
I am only really familiar with:
1-New England
2-Rural NY state Finger Lakes area
3-Rural NJ/PA border areas
and
4-Rural/Atlanta GA areas
But brother…same same in all of those places.
Bet on it.
Betcha it is similar throughout rural America.
Bet on that as well.
That’s a lot of guns and gun totin’ motherfuckers.
Yes it is.
AG