Vicious "Gun Appreciation Day" unveiled
Yael T. AbouhalkahSome conservative gun lovers are promoting “Gun Appreciation Day” on Jan. 19.
It’s another one of those malicious, spiteful decisions that gun nuts have been making even after 26 kids and adults were slaughtered by a gunman last December at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.
The day is supposed to be aimed, in part, at President Barack Obama. Part of the no-nothing arguments being made by America’s gun lovers is that Obama is trying to kill the Second Amendment.
Puh-lease.
Obama has been a friend of the gun industry, as this article duly notes.
He endorsed people being allowed to carry loaded firearms in national parks - and on checked baggage on Amtrak trains. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence gave Obama an “F” on its scorecard in 2010.
The “gun-rights” groups want owners to come out in droves to gun stores, ranges and shows on Jan. 19.
“We have never had a president who so callously disregards the Constitution, Congress, the courts and the will of the American people,” Gun Appreciation Day Chairman Larry Ward said.
What a laugh.
The only upside for Obama: Vice President Joe Biden has been unleashed to look into how to improve the nation’s gun control laws.
The attack that killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook might - just might - push Congress to approve reasonable but also tough new gun control laws.
Yes, even after “Gun Appreciation Day” is just another faded memory.
Reginald Thornton
4 months, 1 week agoThe definition of shallow: Yael’s evidence that Obama is pro 2nd amendment? An article. An article by businessinsider, founded by someone ordered out of securities analysis for hyping stock research. Now apparently he’s in the business of assisting 2nd rate opinion writers buttress their own flimsy efforts.
Yael asserts without any other supporting evidence that Obama’s “view” of the 2nd amendment won’t take a Kerry-like turn, where Obama was for the 2nd amendment before he was against it. And why not, he did the same thing with his “evolving” views of gay marriage.
Maybe Yael can check businessinsider for articles about those two events.
Jack Gates
4 months, 1 week agoWhen Yael thinks he’s insulting me by calling me a “gun nut” is when I know I’m doing something right. Calling me a “gun nut” is like calling Yael a “journalist”. Thanks Yael!
Mark Hastert
4 months, 1 week agoThe NRA isn’t about gun rights so much as it is about gun commerce.Go to the range, shoot off your gun and go to the store to buy more! Duh?
A well made firearm lasts a long long time, some are passed from generation to generation, so manufacturers have to find ways to sell people new and more guns or they’ll go out of business. Now, I don’t blame a businessman for making a business decision I do blame them for marketing in a manner that stimulates the unwholesome (even prurient?)in some of their customers.
Greg McFarland
4 months, 1 week agoVicious? Where were you when the Des Moines Register was calling for murdering NRA members and dragging Republicans through the street? Shallow is the right word. I guess its OK for the left to advocate murdering the innocent and law abiding but not for gun owners to show appreciation to tools that keep them safe…..
George Hunsucker
Northland
4 months, 1 week agoLet’s see yt.. maybe it is such things as the paper in White Plains, NY publishing the names and addresses of gun owners and columns such as yours USING the deaths of these children to promote your lib agenda that is causing the backlash…
NO,NO, NO, couldn’t be… must be all we gun nuts supporting the Constitution
George Hunsucker
Northland
4 months, 1 week agomaybe you can check into this yt…
http://www.wnd.com/2013/01/the-giant-gaping-hole-in-sandy-hook-reporting/
Of course it won’t support your storyline, but I am sure you are wanting to be “fair and balanced”….
Matt Henry
4 months, 1 week agoI’m sticking with my comment from yesterday that this is an “awful” human being. This snarling, oozing hatred coming from a man who has worked overtime to exploit the deaths of those 20 children for his own cowardly ends. Awful fits.
“Vicious”, “malicious” and “spiteful” all used in one breath to describe those who use their voices to disagree with YTA. “Reasonable” is how he defines his position. Oh, and let’s not forget “gun nut” which has been used by YTA and the other editorial writers about 50 times since Sandy Hook. Yep, he’s pretty “reasonable”.
Plus, classic YTA obfuscation. Just because Obama hasn’t taken on gun owners before his election when he was still hedging his ideological bets doesn’t mean that issue isn’t a concern now, especially with what is leaking out about what Biden’s group is advocating.
Lastly, while it may not apply to gun control I would agree that no President has had less respect for Constitutional limits on his authority than this man. Bombing Libya without consulting congress, his coming attempt at a hostile takeover of the debt limit, “recess” appointments when the Senate is not in recess, ignoring the will of congress by imposing “Cap and Trade” and other environmental limits through the EPA, and dozens of statements in which he has said that “if congress will not act then I will”… This is a man who fancies himself a dictator, not interested in working with the representatives of the people in Congress.
Obama’s behavior indicates he is not interested in the will of the people as represented by those in Congress who have been elected to represent those people and you are surprised that gun owners are worried about what this dictator-wannabee will do? Seriously?
George Hunsucker
Northland
4 months, 1 week agoWe will overcome the anti second amendment nuts too…..
http://www.youtube.com/watchpopup?feature=playerembedded&v=TnQDW-NMaRs#!
Phil Cardarella
4 months, 1 week agoOK, which of you guys will admit that you need an AK and a 30-round clip to take on a deer?
We get it. You like your guns. We just think that dead kids are a bit of a high price for your toys — especially those that you cannot articulate a lawful use for that passes the not-entirely-fantasy test.
Aussies like guns too. They hunt, and even have guns in their homes for “protection” — rational in the outback, less so in Sydney. But, they completely banned assault-style weaponry in 1996 and have not had a mass murder since.
Gotta say that whatever you use those type of guns for, it is not as important as stopping these mass killings.
Howard Flint P E
4 months, 1 week agoNo new gun laws are needed. Owners should take better care of the guns they have and have them out of sight, locked up under their control. This will owner control solve many but not all gun problems. Getting inside peoples screwed up minds is the bigger problem.
Mark Hastert
4 months, 1 week ago“Where were you when the Des Moines Register was calling for murdering NRA members and dragging Republicans through the street?”
Sigh…I was reading the article, It’s satire and really very funny. Apparently none of you bothered. Which is why so many of these comments make to authors appear….? Lets use the euphemism uninformed.
You can read the entire piece yourself online but here’s a follow up commentary from Donald Kaul himself…
“I think I hit a nerve.
I recently had a thoughtful, well-reasoned column (“Nation Needs a New Agenda on Guns,” Dec. 30) suggesting ways to cut down on gun violence in our ever more violent society. It proposed, among other things:
• Repealing the Second Amendment and with it the right to buy assault weapons at will.
• Declaring the National Rifle Association a terrorist organization and making membership illegal.
• Confiscating all assault, semi-automatic and other military-style weapons designed to kill large numbers of people very quickly.
As I said, thoughtful, well reasoned.
I also proposed, satirically and more in sorrow than in anger, tying House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to the back of a pickup truck and dragging them around until they agreed to exert some control over guns.”
Richard L Wagner
4 months, 1 week agoThere was a time in the early history that the NRA advocated for more gun control than Diane Feinstien. Somewhere along the road, they have evolved into a mostly gun manufactors lobbying group, with hardly an objective postion, in putting gun and ammo sales and commerical interst before the safety and welfare of the American public.
btw, I own three guns. Spare me the anti-gun labels.
Reginald Thornton
4 months, 1 week agoSorry, Richard. You’re anti gun. Owning three guns doesn’t define pro or anti gun. Lots of elites employ bodyguards that carry the guns for them. What you have in common with them is that you are anti gun for the rest of us.
And Hastert. Are you getting paid to defend that Iowa column as being satire? You really thought it was “funny”? As satire, it was pathetic, which is a good clue that it wasn’t actually satire.
Mark Hastert
4 months, 1 week agoYou see I’m not anti gun, I’m anti a gun that can spray 30 rounds in 30 seconds. Te flaw in your argument and all the NRA logic is that you think it’s an all or nothing proposition. I’m all for hunting, traps, targets and person protection in the home. I’m against the military style weapons that manufacturers market to a small niche of gun owners with a perverse worship of killing power.
I’m not surprised that the Reg didn’t think the Donald Kaul piece wasn’t funny. Satire is seldom understood by it’s object but I’ll say that the NRA shills are the only ones who didn’t get it.
Greg McFarland
4 months, 1 week agoYou realize that most any gun with a bit of practice can put out 30 shoots in 30 seconds? Bolt action rifles and single shots would be tough but might make it. Any hand gun can do it with ease as could a semi auto rifle.
Greg McFarland
4 months, 1 week agoPhil, so no mass shootings in Australia but there really has been only a slight lowering in murders. Meanwhile their violent crime rate has gone way up. So in summary in Australia it appears that maybe 10-20 people less are killed per year but 50,000 more assaults, 5,000 more sexual assaults, 300 more kidnappings and maybe 1000 more robberies. (From www.aic.gov.au). Data from 1996 to 2007.
So lets really ask the question, are all those other crimes less important than saving 10-20 lives? That is the really hard thing to answer.
Greg McFarland
4 months, 1 week agoSorry, misread the murder numbers. The went down from about 350 to 300 or so.
Matt Henry
4 months, 1 week agoWhat passes today as satire is by nature the mocking of someone’s beliefs. It is asking a lot to ask someone to be mocked and then say “you have no sense of humor” when they don’t laugh. Perhaps those who use satire as a weapon should not be the same people that are always demanding compromise and wondering why the other side isn’t more reasonable.
It is also the responsibility of those who are fond of satire to take it as well as they give it. Were I to do a whole bit on the universal school symbol for “gun free zone” being a target and should be mandatory on all kindergartener t-shirts, how would most on the “ban guns” side react? That certainly does sum up how gun-rights folks see the “gun-free” zones; as an advertisement to come in and target our children. What? Offensive?Well, it’s only satire! Lighten up! Have a sense of humor!
Perhaps mocking, hyperbolic satire and calling each other gun-nuts, vicious, malicious and spiteful is not the best way to find common ground on this issue. For the life of me I can’t figure out why liberals are always considered the compassionate ones.
Richard L Wagner
4 months, 1 week agoReginald.
My bodyguards only carry the finest in small arms. Of course, when you have an estate as large as I do, and have so many celebrities visiting at any one time, one does needs quality protective services.
Now, be off, peasent!
Steve Frye
4 months agoWell, people like Yael T. Abouhalkah like to point out that the musket was the weapon that the Founders had in mind when the 2nd Amendment was drafted, and that they never conceived a world with the weapons of the modern age. And thus, Yael would be content restricting the weapons that we the People would have on the basis of putting the 2nd Amendment in the context of what was available in 1781. Well, if that logic is true, then this internet page, television and radio press should be subject to government control and regulation as well. After all, the Founders would have never contemplated these mediums as the modern day “press” either. Sadly, Yael misses the point of the 2nd Amendment, which is that a regulated (meaning, well provisioned) militia (meaning armed forces) is necessary to the free state, and the “right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Uh by the way, those last words are pretty clear…what part of “shall not be infringed” is misunderstood by our linguist Yael? Perhaps we should chip in and by him a Websters Dictionary (if they still publish them that is). Last but not least—I’ve had it with the KC Star. I’m cancelling our subscription as soon as I hit “Post Comment”. Your liberal pap has driven me crazy but I have tried really hard to support the local paper as the publishing industry continues to fight against their decline. The reality is, I don’t care about your jobs anymore. When you stopped caring about my liberties, I stopped caring about your jobs. Good luck in your next venture.