Saturday, March 19, 2011

THIS Is CNN?

Wow. Just wow. Maybe we are winning after all...

Add this to Utah's list of state symbols: an official firearm

(CNN) -- Until this week, Utah had 24 state symbols, from tree (the blue spruce) to insect (the honeybee) to even cooking pot (the Dutch oven).

Now it's added an official state firearm -- the John M. Browning-designed M1911 pistol, becoming the first state in the nation to have one, according to the state legislator who sponsored the law.

CNN is reporting on Utah's decision to honor local boy made good John Moses Browning (PBUH) by making his 1911 design the official state firearm. That is, quite simply, astonishing. This is the same CNN that ran breathless videos in 2004 claiming that the Assault Weapons Ban expiring that year would result in machine guns flooding the street.

Oh, wait, here's the PSH:
Other critics have said the new state symbol implicitly condones gun violence.
So an inanimate object "condones [inanimate object] violence"? My good friend Weerd Beard has been maintaining an ongoing collection of stories of people killed by means other than firearms. Folks, we need to say it again, apparently. Let me run pictures:


This:



is not a symbol of obesity;


This:



is not a symbol of drunk driving;

And this:



is not a symbol of abuse.

It's the person misusing the symbol that's the issue. Always has been, always will be. Outlaw guns and the goblins will use knives. Outlaw knives and the goblins will use bats or sticks. Going after the inanimate object used rather than the person responsible - and the underlying socio-economical troubles that precede such incidents - is short-sighted and doomed to fail.

Unless, of course, like the Assault Weapons Ban, the legislation is aimed not at reducing crime but at increasing control, that is...

That is all.

11 comments:

Maura said...

Excellent post, Jay.

Bubblehead Les. said...

Too bad JMB (PBUH!) didn't invent the Glock. ; )

Dave H said...

I have to dispute one thing, Jay. You said, "Outlaw guns and the goblins will use knives." We've seen from history that outlawing things doesn't stop the outlaws from having them. Remember Prohibition? Me neither, but the drink kept flowing in spite of the law.

I agree 100% with your sentiment though - evil people will always find a way to do evil, with whatever means are available.

DaddyBear said...

No offense, Jay, but you'd have to get me pretty pickled before I'd climb behind the way of a K-Car.

Jay G said...

Thanks Maura.

Heh, Les.

Dave, I was speaking generally, but your point is well-taken.

Ha, DaddyBear!

Dragon said...

+1 to Daddybear...

The *K* car was definitely the symbol of inebriated driving, because you had to be incoherently enebriated to actually spend good money on the thing, resulting in *becoming* enebriated every time you looked in the driveway and saw the thing sitting there, and you wondered how the hell *that* happened.

ASM826 said...

All three of the objects you pictured could be, and have been, used as weapons with lethal results.

seeker_two said...

Dave H. is correct....outlaw guns, and the outlaws will still have guns....laws only work on the people willing to obey them and the state willing to control/imprison/execute those who don't....

Weer'd Beard said...

+1 to Dave, Just look at Boston, under-age convicted felons without LTCs blasting away at eachother...over what? Drugs...hmm isn't that stuff illegal too?

BTW, thanks for the h/t to the "Gun Death?" Files. You know, running that macabre collection of gruesome tales, when I first saw the image of the fork, I thought you might have seen a story involving a fork stabbing.

Running that collection has really proven to me that violence is in the heart, not in the hand. I've covered stories of murder from everything from a microwave oven, to a microphone cable, to bare hands.

It ain't the tools we should be afraid of, its the monsters that walk among us.

Wolfman said...

Just in reference, goblins don't even always need guns to commit crimes. Kevin at TSM just posted up a story of a gas station bandit in Peoria AZ that threatened to bash the clerk's head in with a rock if he didn't give him the money. He left with an undisclosed amount of cash...

I worry more about the emasculation of our culture than the monsters. The more it goes on, the easier it is to make a monster.

ExurbanKevin said...

Well, to be fair, a 90's era K-Car is not a symbol of ANYTHING automotive related...