Thursday Afternoon Tabs
- Via AL.com: Georgia police used photo of Black man for shooting practice
- Via NPR: Black-owned radio station may lose license over FCC ‘character qualifications’ policy
- Via the Texas Tribune: Inmates are dying in stifling Texas prisons, but the state seldom acknowledges heat as a cause of death.
- Via WaPo: National Geographic lays off its last remaining staff writers.
- Via the NYT: How Migrants Flown to Martha’s Vineyard Came to Call It Home.
- Via Popular Information: US murder rate declines dramatically in 2023 — but you probably haven’t heard about it.
- Via the AP: US adult cigarette smoking rate hits new all-time low.
- And one that I have been sitting on since March via the NYT: The Largest Source of Stolen Guns? Parked Cars. This reminds me of this happening in my old neighborhood. Not only did one of my doofus neighbors leave their gun in their car, but they also didn’t lock the car. The problem here, in my view, is that lax carry rules and general gun culture make this kind of thing more likely. Action movie fantasies are great, but the notion that most people who have guns in their cars will ever need them, let alone use them efficaciously, continues to be farcical.
The Everytown researchers found that a decade ago, less than a quarter of all gun thefts were from cars; in 2020, over half of them were. The researchers say more study is needed to understand the shift, which has occurred as more states have adopted permitless carry laws and messages in gun-industry marketing have encouraged Americans to take their weapons with them for personal protection.
And this is just a chef’s kiss of irony:
In some cities, organized groups of young people have swept through neighborhoods and areas around sports arenas, looking for weapons left under car seats or in unlocked center consoles or glove compartments. Their work is occasionally made easier by motorists who advertise their right to bear arms with car window stickers promoting favored gun brands, or that declare “molon labe” — a defiant message from ancient Sparta, which roughly translates as “come and take them.”
Perfect.
As I asked yesterday about the Florida Man who emptied his magazine at the pool guy,
Leaving firearms in vehicles is a monumentally stupid act. I know three neighbors who had pistols stolen from their trucks at night while the trucks were parked in their driveways. One person is a retired deputy sheriff. They all told me they forgot about them which is as dumb as the idiots who get caught with weapons in their carry-on luggage.
But, your honor… He told me to!
@gVOR10: I wonder how many mojitos the Florida shooter had before he cut loose on the pool guy
DeSantis, in an attempt to gather applause, is now proposing to get rid of the IRS, the Department of Commerce, and the Department of Energy.
Aside from the fact that he’d be getting rid of an Constitutionally-mandated office (ahem, the Patent Office), how does the fool plan to pay for anything?
@grumpy realist:
He doesn’t. In the magic world of DeSantistan it will be all milk and honey following the defeat of the woke.
@grumpy realist: I think he was just trying to do Rick Perry without the oops. Which he thinks is good strategy.
@Mr. Prosser: This is why I say that if we want to talk about “responsible gun owners shouldn’t be punished” then we need to define and punishing the irresponsible ones. Leaving a gun in your car unlocked is highly irresponsible and if you do it, you should be punished by having your right to carry revoked.
@grumpy realist:..fool…
I’m sure Governor DeSantis will gladly return these federal funds from the Florida Treasury to assist financing the dismantling of the US Department of Energy.
Too lazy to go find the source but a surprisingly high number of guns have been left in bathrooms and other places by school employees that have been found by kids. By and large nothing happens to those employees.
Steve
@Kazzy: Agree. There needs to be severe liability as well.
Are they then selling the guns, or are they activists getting loose guns off the street and destroying them?
If the latter, I’m willing to contribute to a bail fund or legal defense fund.
@Mr. Prosser: I’ve offered this proposal in several places and every “responsible gun owner advocate” poo poos it without explanation:
1.) Have your guns, but you are responsible for them.
2.) If a gun is used in a crime, the owner is liable
3.) If that gun was lost or stolen and the owner filed a prompt and proper police report, they can avoid liability and maintain their license.
4.) If a gun owner has more than 1 gun lost or stolen, they lose their license.
To me, it seems pretty straightforward: if you take care of your gun and it is never used in any sort of criminal activity, you’re fine. If you don’t — if you are irresponsible with your gun — you’ve got some problems coming your way.
For whatever reason, this is a non-stater.
@Kazzy:
I think that the non-stater quality comes from what “you lose your license” means in the context of
and how much weight people place on the last highlighted portion of the statement.
Well, sure. But those are the same people who want to nail Hunter Biden’s ass to the wall because he ILLEGALLY possessed a gun as a drug user. So they’re okay with certain restrictions.
Further, all these people talk about is how RESPONSIBLE gun owners shouldn’t be punished. Fine! I agree! But the implication is that it is okay to punish IRRESPONSIBLE gun owners. But they don’t actually want that either. They just want there to be no rules for (white, male) gun owners.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Sure I agree but there is a bigger problem.
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State …
This is no longer true and hasn’t been since the end of the War of 1812. Full stop. the militia has not played a significant role in the defense of the country since Washington decided that the best course of action during the whiskey rebellion was to shoot farmers. Not great from a freedom standpoint but it was also the last time we had a coherent farm policy (with all due respect to PJ O’Rourke).
The 2nd Amendment was created in order to prevent the US government from creating a large peacetime standing army. That ship has sailed and a bunch of authoritarian curious yahoos reinterpreting it to mean an unlimited right to walk around Wal*Mart with an arsenal for god know what unchecked doesn’t change that.
So sure, I get it, it’s dueling interpretations, but I get frustrated when it’s asserted that the 2nd is unarguably a blank check for everyone to be armed to the teeth at all times when we have operated under an interpretation that focused on the first phrase much much longer. The idea that the 2nd amendment ties our hands form doing things that should be common sense is exhausting, pernicious, and wrong. For crying out loud Jefferson himself was comfortable with banning firearms on the Campus of the University of Virginia.
TLDR: You can interpret the constitutional any way you want, even to include authoritarian and anti-majoritarian concepts as perfectly constitutional.
@Rick DeMent: @Kazzy: All I’m doing is suggesting why Kazzy’s idea is the non- starter he says it is. If I treated a rhetorical question as non, my apologies.
Oh, I didn’t mean to get argumentative. I’m sure that is what they’d point at. They’d also conveniently forget that when arguing against the gun rights of people not their tribe.