Been a long time coming. This is also a test of the block editor in WordPress, which I had had disabled since it was introduced.

Why the gun-grabbers are wrong, in a nutshell:

Self Defense is a Human Right

It doesn’t matter what your lifestyle choices are, there are evil people out there who want you to die for them. Evil doesn’t care about laws. In this particular case we are talking about a subset of ideologically inspired killers so motivated that they weaponize pressure cookers and regularly carry out gun massacres in countries where regular citizens aren’t allowed to own guns.

I already addressed mass killings and all the various regularly proposed gun laws in 2012 after Sandy Hook. This ended up being one of the most widely read articles ever written on the subject. If you want to have an in depth look at these events and how all the regular gun control proposals work, read this first: http://monsterhunternation.com/2015/06/23/an-opinion-on-gun-control-repost/

And everything I want to say about the typical media/government response to these atrocities, I said after San Bernardino:  http://monsterhunternation.com/2015/12/03/guns-and-vultures/

[…]

When evil people attack, you can either be in a position to do something about it, or wait for somebody else to come and save you. Being armed and trained doesn’t guarantee your safety any more than wearing a seatbelt doesn’t mean you’ll live through a crash, or owning a fire extinguisher means your house won’t burn down, but it may help.

Please read that first link where I go into detail how mass shootings work and how they usually unfold. We see every time that the best way to end a mass shooting event is an immediate violent response. If that response comes from somebody already present, the body count is usually lower. If the response comes from the police, then there are usually more casualties simply due to the response time.

Μολὼν λαβέ.

Change we can believe in:

More Young Adults Live With a Parent Than With a Spouse, Partner

For the first time in more than 130 years of record-keeping, young adults in the United States are more likely living with mom and dad than they are living with a spouse or partner.

Thirty-two percent of millennials adults aged 18-34 were living in their parents’ home in 2014, compared to 31.6 percent of millennials who live with a spouse or significant other, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of government data.

Another 14 percent of millennials live alone, or else are single parents. Twenty-two percent live in other circumstances.

[…]

“Dating back to 1880, the most common living arrangement among young adults has been living with a romantic partner, whether a spouse or a significant other,” it continues. “This type of arrangement peaked around 1960, when 62% of the nation’s 18- to 34-year-olds were living with a spouse or partner in their own household, and only one-in-five were living with their parents.”

The article blames changes in who gets married and when.  Given what marriage costs (both up front and on an ongoing basis afterward), I suspect the crappy economy’s at least as much to blame.  People don’t have the money to get married, and the tax code still disincentivizes marriage.

“Nazi theory indeed specifically denies that such a thing as ‘the truth’ exists. … The implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but the past. If the Leader says of such and such an event, ‘It never happened’ – well, it never happened. If he says that two and two are five – well, two and two are five. This prospect frightens me much more than bombs.”

— George Orwell, “Looking Back on the Spanish War,” via Wikipedia

Elsewhere, I’ve read that if we subtracted out the blue-state-shithole stats, our murder rate as a country wouldn’t be that much different than it is in Europe…if anything, it might actually be lower.  Chicago, Baltimore, and the rest, however, are blowing the average out of the water:

America Doesn’t Have a Gun Problem, It Has a Democrat Problem

America’s mass shooting capital isn’t somewhere out west where you can get a gun at the corner store. It’s in Obama’s own hometown.

Chicago is America’s mass shooting capital. There were over 400 shootings with more than one victim. In 95 of those shootings, 3 or more people were shot.

2,995 people were shot in Chicago last year. Shootings were up, way up, in Baltimore. With an assist from Al Sharpton and #BlackLivesMatter, Baltimore beat out Detroit. But Detroit is still in the running. Chicago, Baltimore and Detroit all have something in common, they’re all run by the party of gun control which somehow can’t seem to manage to control the criminals who have the guns.

The murder rate in Washington, D.C., home of the progressive boys and girls who can solve it all, is up 54%. The capital of the national bureaucracy has also been the country’s murder capital.

These cities are the heartland of America’s real gun culture. It isn’t the bitter gun-and-bible clingers in McCain and Romney territory who are racking up a more horrifying annual kill rate than Al Qaeda; it’s Obama’s own voting base.

Gun violence is at its worst in the cities that Obama won in 2012. Places like New Orleans, Memphis, Birmingham, St. Louis, Kansas City and Philly. The Democrats are blaming Republicans for the crimes of their own voters.

Click through for more.

Imagine how much lower it would’ve been if shitholes like Chicago and Baltimore had proper mayors and city councils instead of the corrupt excuses for the same with which they’ve been saddled.  Even with that not being the case, this kinda blows a hole in the case for gun confiscation that all the usual suspects have been making lately:

(source: Pew Research Center: Gun Deaths Down 30% Since 1993)

Prehistoric sand dunes were buried and compressed into sandstone. Subsequent geologic processes brought them to the surface; erosion has given them their pockmarked appearance. I passed by these on the way to St. Thomas…thought they looked neat, so I stopped for a few minutes on the way back.

Flooded by the rise of Lake Mead in the ’30s. Resurfaced by the lake’s shrinkage in 2003.

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Clever and witty:

Love Gov: From First Date to Mandate

Love Gov depicts an overbearing boyfriend — Scott “Gov” Govinsky — who foists his good intentions on hapless, idealistic college student, Alexis. Each episode follows Alexis’s relationship with Gov as his intrusions wreak (comic) havoc on her life, professionally, financially, and socially. Alexis’s loyal friend Libby tries to help her see Gov for what he really is — a menace. But will Alexis come to her senses in time? Tune in to find out!