Indian Women Try to Arm Themselves

According to The Guardian, scores of women in India have been contacting their local police on how to obtain a gun license in the wake of a recent brutal gang rape and murder.

Unfortunately, India rarely grants such licenses, which means that these women will remain defenseless against attackers.  As one official recounts, "We had to patiently tell them that one needs to have a clear danger to one's life to be given a licence."

India's standard for obtaining a license to possess a firearm seems similar to New York's "proper cause" requirement for obtaining a carry license--individuals must show "a special need for self-protection distinguishable from that of the general community or of persons engaged in the same profession."  In New York City, this means "exposure . . . to extraordinary personal danger, documented by proof of recurrent threats to life or safety requiring authorization to carry a handgun." There must be "instances in which Police Department records demonstrate that the life and well-being of an individual is endangered, and that s/he should, therefore, be authorized to carry a handgun." And "the mere fact that an applicant has been the victim of a crime or resides in or is employed in a ‘high crime area,’ does not establish ‘proper cause’ for the issuance of a carry or special handgun license."  Since so few people can meet this criteria, licenses are only issued to the rich, famous, and politically connected.

In India as in New York, however, strict laws do little to curb illegal firearm ownership.  According to The Guardian, "There are estimated to be 40m guns in India, the second highest number in the world after the US. Licences are hard to obtain and most are illegal weapons, many manufactured in backstreet workshops. Official ownership levels remain low – three guns for every 100 people."  The DOJ estimates that there are some 2 million illegal guns in New York City.  Prohibition simply does not work.

India's rape epidemic poses a conundrum for mainstream American liberals.  Just as Siouxsie and the Banshees' Arabian Knights draws criticism for its harsh view of Muslim and Arabic men, many politically correct liberals hesitate to condemn misogyny in other cultures.  After all, liberalism is all about tolerance and acceptance of cultural differences, so we shouldn't judge other cultures by their misogynistic practices.  At the same time, violence against women is something that liberals do not tolerate, and rightfully so.

This liberal double bind often surfaces in discussions of violence against women.  On the one hand, liberals will sympathize with criminals, and complain that the American criminal justice system unjustly persecutes minorities.  At the same time, the pro-perp crowd routinely condemns rapists and domestic violence misdemeanants, as if drug dealers and other "non-violent" offenders were not the same people beating their girlfriends and committing rapes.

The situation of the Indian women inquiring about gun ownership further complicates the scenario for the liberal crowd, which views guns as a form of evil incarnate that must be eradicated. 

The liberal, "feminist" blog Jezebel mistakenly reported the story that gun sales were rising among Indian women, conveniently glossing over the fact that India's strict "gun control" laws assure that Indian women will not be able to lawfully possess firearms.

Interestingly, Jezebel simply linked to the Guardian article without comment, despite having spent the better part of the last month blasting guns and gun owners with all the sophistication of a twelve-year-old with ADD.

The fact that Indian women want to arm themselves for protection managed to silence the liberal "feminists" at Jezebel because their worldview simply does not allow them to comprehend that firearm ownership is a legitimate means of self-defense. But they would come across as insensitive to the plight of Indian women if they criticized them in the same way they criticize American gun owners.

American women, according to the liberals, should not own guns to protect themselves because guns are evil.  There are always "other ways" to protect yourself, the argument goes. Since "most" rapes (although definitely NOT ALL rapes) occur between acquaintances, having a gun would be of no use, since the rapist would already be too close by the time the need for self-defense arose. And, besides, guns are only magical, heat-seeking death rays when used by criminals; an armed victim will only have her weapon taken away from her by the attacker.

Luckily, the police in America are fantastic and will always be there in time to rescue you.  (Never mind that these are the same police who are violating the civil rights of minorities; when it suits the liberals' argument, the corrupt cops magically metamorphose into heroes.)  The real solution is to teach men not to rape (yeah, that'll work…)

"Bloomberg, LaPierre, and the Void"

In what is perhaps the most sensible op-ed I've read in The New York Times in ages, Ross Douthat had the nerve to criticize mainstream American liberals.

Using Mayor Bloomberg as a figurehead for "the self-consciously centrist liberalism of the Acela Corridor elite," Douthat emphasizes Bloomberg's provincialism, and "his bedrock assumption is that the liberal paternalism with which New York is governed can and should be a model for the nation as a whole."

Appropriately, Douthat suggests that popular liberal proposals, such as a renewed "assault weapons ban" and crackdowns on "illegal handguns," would come with a tremendous cost.  In order to ensure effective enforcement, criminalizing harmless behavior (such as the mere possession of a weapon) requires the infringement of other Constitutional rights (in addition to the Second Amendment).  Further, at a time when our nation's prisons are full of non-violent offenders, weapons bans will ultimately place even more non-violent people behind bars, destroying communities in the process.  As Douthat writes, "cracking down hard on illegal handguns, for instance, would probably involve “stop and frisk” on a huge scale, and might throw more young men in prison at a time when our incarceration rates are already too high."  Liberals, however, seem completely ignorant of this practical reality, and instead advocate increased criminalization of firearms without realizing that proper enforcement would necessitate an expansion of law enforcement practices that they find to be objectionable.

Douthat's summary of contemporary American liberalism is spot on. "The establishment view is interventionist, corporatist and culturally liberal," he writes. "It thinks that issues like health care and climate change and immigration are best worked out through comprehensive bills drawn up by enlightened officials working hand in glove with business interests. It regards sexual liberty as sacrosanct, and other liberties — from the freedoms of churches to the rights of gun owners — as negotiable at best. It thinks that the elite should pay slightly higher taxes, and everyone else should give up guns, SUVs and Big Gulps and live more like, well, Manhattanites. It allows the president an entirely free hand overseas, and takes the Bush-Obama continuities in foreign policy for granted."

On foreign policy, today's liberals are the direct descendants of the liberal imperialists who spurred America's involvement in Vietnam.  The New York Times takes for granted that the United States should exert its military presence throughout the world, and only bothers to criticize the abuses of imperialist excess when a Republican occupies the White House.  Domestically, liberals favor civilian disarmament, secularism, political correctness, and excessive government regulation of all human behavior save what goes on the bedroom.  Ultimately, their faith in the power of the State to correct social problems is unwaverable (provided, of course, that the Democrats are in power).

What is perhaps most frustrating, however, is how liberals are incapable of accepting the fact that they might be wrong about something.  They know that they are right and that their views should prevail over those of others because they are smarter than everyone else (having attended the best schools and the best universities).

Living in NYC, most of the people I interact with are die-hard liberals who follow the opinions of The New York Times and The Huffington Post to the letter.  When they encounter someone (like me) who possesses different views, their reactions feature a combination of disbelief (how could anyone not agree with me?) and anger.  They are remarkably quick to turn to insults because they are not used to conversing with people who are not liberals--as Charles Murray shows in Coming Apart, they spend their lives in carefully guarded enclaves surrounded by other members of the liberal elite.  For them, I am insane for believing in the right to keep and bear arms, paranoid for not trusting my government, and anti-American for opposing U.S. imperialism.

As Radley Balko tweeted in a reaction to Douthat's piece, "I wonder if the angry commenters responding to Douthat's NYT column today realize that they're only proving his point."

In the posts that at least advanced some sort of argument, commenters parroted many of the anti-gun left's favorite cliches, arguing that no one "needs" an "assault weapon," that there is no reason for them "unless you are planning a massacre," and that any notion of resisting the almighty government through armed resistance is futile.  Joel Frielander from Huntington Station, NY bemoans "the tiny little brains of many of the gun owners," who mistakenly believe that "if you take one gun away from them you are taking away all of their weapons."  In her own column, Fellow Op-Ed contributor Maureen Dowd follows many liberals in misinterpreting the Second Amendment as applying only to hunters: "Hunters can have their guns without leaving Americans so vulnerable to being hunted by demented souls with assault rifles that can fire 45 rounds per minute."

Of course, the Second Amendment is not about hunting, but about self-defense and defending the nation from tyranny and foreign invaders.  Urban liberals who are not gun owners would of course fail to realize that, in a rural setting where the police are far away and the territory is much larger than a suburban lot, an AR-15 with a 30-round magazine would be a much better self-defense weapon than a handgun.  In that case, their provincialism can be forgiven.  But their defeatism in suggesting that an armed populace would be powerless to resist domestic tyranny never ceases to shock me.

Unfortunately, liberals will never understand that the government is not infallible, and that a massive, armed guerilla uprising could bring the government to its knees.  Although they see America as a force of good in the world, they nonetheless assume that the government would unleash the full force of the U.S. military on its own population (thereby destroying the very society and infrastructure that it wishes to govern over), and that all members of the military and law enforcement would just go on following orders in the face of armed resistance.  The right to own semi-automatic rifles with thirty-round magazines is at the very core of the Second Amendment, in that a well-armed populace ups the ante for the government and makes it think twice before oppressing a disfavored minority or the population as a whole.

King Cuomo Hates the Constitution

Andrew Cuomo hates guns. Well, not really. He hates YOUR guns. His security detail and police force can keep their guns, but he wants to take yours, and stop you from buying guns he doesn't want you to have.

 

According to the Daily News and Syracuse.com, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is trying to capitalize on the Newtown massacre by further eroding the gun rights of law-abiding New Yorkers.

Cuomo's proposals include reducing the magazine capacity limit from the current ten rounds to seven rounds.  This would effectively ban semi-automatic handguns in New York State, as very few (aside from 1911s, the Sig P220, and several compact pistols) accept seven-round magazines.  While manufacturers do make ten-round magazines to comply with the laws of New York and other anti-gun states, it is very unlikely that they will make seven-round magazines just to sell to New Yorkers.

(Of course, criminals will continue to use standard-capacity magazines that hold 15 rounds and more, because, well, they're criminals and they don't follow the law.)

Cuomo's proposal means that such treasured pieces of American history as the M1 Garand and the Winchester 1892 lever-action rifle will be illegal in New York State, since both hold eight rounds.

It's not surprising that Cuomo, an authoritarian populist, would want to keep the Garand from New Yorkers, since it was used to defeat the Germans in WWII. I'm not sure what he has against 19th-century cowboys, though.

In addition, Cuomo is proposing to make the new ban retroactive, and to confiscate guns from law-abiding New Yorkers. I'm not sure exactly how he would go about confiscating these weapons, since upstate New York (unlike New York City) does not require registration of rifles.  Perhaps he will just have his Storm Troopers go door-to-door and search every home in the state?

Come to think of it, there might be some resemblance between Cuomo and der Führer.

He's certainly got that sinister look down pat.

And here he is giving a very Hitler-esque salut:

In addition to guns, Cuomo seems to hate law-abiding New Yorkers.  But he loves criminals. In fact, Cuomo has gone on record saying that he wants to close state prisons and send the perps to Harvard. 

You can't make these things up. They say we get the leaders we deserve, but I have no idea what I could have done to deserve having this asshole as my governor.

Google Offers: Brazilian Wax

Found this in my inbox this morning: 60% Off Brazilian Waxing.

Ladies, please, don't do this to yourselves.  Seriously, you don't need to spend money and put yourself through great pain just to make your body acceptable for porn-addicted American males.  It's December, for fuck's sake, don't even bother to shave your legs!

Note the price, too, a suggestive $69.  Message: if you want him to perform cunnilingus on you, don't let yourself go! Remember, as a woman your body is naturally disgusting! You have to remove all your pubic hair to keep him happy!

Essam Attia

Artist Essam Attia was due in court on Dec. 3 after he was arrested and charged "with 56 counts of criminal possession of a forged instrument, grand larceny possession of stolen property and weapons possession after allegedly having an unloaded .22-caliber revolver under his bed at his Manhattan apartment when he was arrested early Wednesday" on November 28.  Read more: NY Daily News.

Back in September, Essam posted fake NYPD posters around the City to raise awareness about the surveillance state, drone assassinations, and the fact that both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama are murderous imperialists who are determined to take away our civil liberties.

While Essam was expressing the truth, he should also have a First Amendment right to express himself.  The NYPD and the Manhattan D.A. obviously think otherwise.  That gun possession charge for the .22 just makes it even more obvious that the Bill of Rights simply does not apply in New York City.  Most likely, the police barged into his home at 6am with a no-knock warrant as well.

"Welcome to New York City.  Please surrender your First, Second, and Fourth Amendment rights upon arrival."