Check Please!

Reality Check! Because people are idiots.

• So some schmucks were, for various reasons, snagging loogies at the idea that "if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns." One was, "Law-abiding gun-owners will fight to retain their weapons." Historically, no, no they haven't. Europe exists, you know, you may've wanted to examine the history of gun control there—especially Germany, which was rifleman central pretty much since the things were invented. Now, not so much, though its gun laws are pretty loose for Western Europe (so are Scandinavia's).
  
  But the others were apparently skeptical that outlawing guns won't keep them out of the hands of criminals. Again, the rest of the world exists. Japan is the only country I can think of where gun control works as advertised, but that's for two reasons: Japan's prisons are horrible, and the yakuza, who have guns, take a dim view of non-member violent criminals. But both Australia and the UK have seen violent crime, including with guns, skyrocket since their gun bans—though immigration and the illegalization of self-defense may also be factors, in that second one. What do I mean? In the UK, if you defend yourself with, say, a kitchen knife, you can be charged with assault. Also, if someone attacks you, you're taught to shout "call the police" instead of "help". That's so stupid I can't even feel Schadenfreud, and it's British people it's happening to!


• I don't know if I mentioned this, but, Teflon-coated bullets: does anyone actually still think they'll go through police Kevlar vests? Because they won't. Bullets are coated in Teflon for the same reason full metal jacket bullets are coated in metal: to keep them from shredding in the barrel, and fouling it with bits of lead. Gun barrels, after all, are much harder than lead.
  
  Someone else who was writing on the topic pointed out that ordinary rifle rounds will go through a police vest quite easily. So why do police use the vests? Because less than 1% of crimes are committed with rifles. That includes the weapons covered by the "assault weapons" ban, yet another reason it was stupid.


• A third note about guns, so this dude said something about "31-round clips" and "is suburban America under siege from rogue elephants and nobody told me about it?"
  
  Isn't it cute? Aside from "magazine, not clip", or the fact the magazines (of assault rifles, submachine guns, and Lugers with snail-shell magazines) are 30 rounds (31 being one in the chamber, maybe?), "rogue elephants" was funny to me. I don't know of any popular self-defense round that'll work on elephants, do you? .44 Magnum isn't even very popular for defense, and it's barely adequate for grizzlies. Either this dude was overrating the power of self-defense rounds, or underrating the toughness of large animals—or he suffers from the delusion .454 Casull is popular for self-defense.
  
  Speaking of, grizzlies' hearts, even when they're mad, apparently beat once every second and a half—so even if you shoot one, it won't bleed out in time to save you. Permit me to recommend a shotgun, with either buckshot or slugs.


• The same dude, elsewhere, said that demand for drugs has been "constant since the beginning of mammal evolution tens of millions of years ago", and that therefore we should legalize them.
  
  Again, let's leave to one side that the Mammalia appeared hundreds of millions of years ago (they are in fact slightly older than the Dinosauria, I believe); apparently this jackass cannot be bothered to look up the history of drug trafficking. The Crack Cocaine Epidemic of the 80s and 90s, anyone? It was Acid in the 60s and 70s; heroin came back in the mid-90s (though not to the extent the guy in Pulp Fiction claimed); currently the drug is meth, which was the big one in Asia in the 70s and 80s. Marijuana has probably been relatively constant, but pot's not really a money crop like the others are.
  
  Pretty sad, huh? I'm hardly Mr. Drug Guy, from the use or enforcement angle, but even I know that different drugs, and drugs in general, have waxed and waned in demand within various markets.


• A third point from this idiot—people like this are like alcohol poisoning, the rock-bottom I hit to recover from my periodic bouts of internet-forum addiction—was about a case where a UK couple, who owned a bed and breakfast, didn't want to give one of their couples' rooms to a gay couple, for religious reasons. And said jackass said that Christians only want their own religion to get special treatment, "like Islam in Saudi Arabia".
  
  That's not just stupid, it's evil—it's outright Orwellian! "Arguing that Christians should not have to violate their conscience is exactly like saying that non-Muslims should have to violate theirs." War is Peace. Love is Hate. Down with Emmanuel Goldstein!
  
  Truly, in the words of Tycho Brahe, the discourse is a shit spigot with the valve snapped off.


• Said imbecile calls himself a pagan, which reminds me: do modern "pagans" own books? Because they sure seem to be a bunch of Liberal Protestants to me. They talk a lot of pretty stuff about individuality and freedom and "if you harm none, do as you will". All of it rather inoffensive, if uninspiring—but not pagan in the slightest.
  
  Individuality isn't really a pagan thing; the Spartans were outright Stalinists and all the others were Fascists. Manlius killing his son for dueling against orders? Yeah, not real individualist, the pagans. The city, or the tribe, was everything; then came the clan, and it, too, was everything, that's why letting oneself be sold into slavery for one's parents' debts was seen as filial piety. I'm curious, how many of these pagans know that their father, according to their religion, has the right to kill them for any reason, until he dies?
  
  Another one, who my sisters debated in vain on a different forum, has two mommies, as they say: does she know that in the entire European pagan tradition, she hasn't got a family? Households exist only where there are men, in paganism; someone might want to show her the kinship terminology of Indo-European languages.
  
  Does anyone else think it's a laugh riot that they actually think they're more feminist than Christianity?


• Speaking of people whose opinions about religion aren't just idiotic, they're actually invalid, you know all those people who try to prove Christianity is evil, from the Old Testament? Has anyone ever pointed out that the only cause they're serving is anti-Semitism? 'Cause Christians—all orthodox Christians, and the vast majority of Protestants—do not consider themselves bound by the precepts contained in the Tanakh. If you want to show that the people who get their morals from the Law and the Prophets are evil, the only reasonable result is to hate Jews, not Christians.
  
  But even so, evil compared to whom? Contrast the marriage by capture rules in the Torah with the ones among Vikings, or Native Americans. I mean, know how many ancient cultures didn't think you had sexual rights to your slaves? Exactly one: Jews. Sure, it was more about avoiding adultery than about the slave's rights, but if I'm a slave-girl and it's against the rules to rape me, do you think I care why?
  
  Context is everything—funny how people who went to school and learned Post-Modernism always forget that principle when it's actually relevant.