"Cold owt. Climitt chang not reel!"

Mike Luckovich.

Today’s tale of Second Amendment Heroism

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: A Missouri House staffer reportedly left a loaded gun in a public restroom in the state Capitol last week.

According to a Capitol Police incident report, a Kahr CM9 9mm pistol – later claimed by House Speaker Tim Jones’ legislative assistant Dave Evans – was found on top of the toilet paper dispenser in a men’s restroom in the Capitol basement Friday. The incident report states that the gun “was fully loaded with one round in the chamber and six rounds in the magazine.”

Capitol police returned the gun to Evans after Jones’ secretary Lisa Bondurant called to report that it was misplaced. The incident report states that Evans didn’t have paperwork for the gun with him, but he “offered a very detailed description of the weapon and the holster (and) was able to identify the weapon by the brand, caliber, color, size, the holster and the ammunition count and type that was in the weapon.”

Evans did not immediately respond to a call from the Post-Dispatch on Monday.

This incident can be traced back to 2011, when a law was passed that “allows Missouri legislators and their staffers to have guns in the Capitol if they have concealed gun permits” — I guess because the Missouri state capitol was gang-infested cesspool of crime at the time, where the stench of death hung heavy in the air and the specter of imminent destruction stalked your every step or something. I don’t know. I don’t pretend to understand the paranoid delusions involved in the average gun nuts’ decision-making process.

Anyway, the capitol is much safer now, because even if you don’t have a gun yourself, you can just find one lying around someplace if you need one — so maybe don’t bring the kids.

[photo by robertnelson]

Every Republican seeking office or reelection is cursing Rick Perry’s name right now

ThinkProgress: Arguing on CNN Sunday Morning that the jury in the George Zimmerman case “made the right decision from their standpoint,” Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) dismissed any suggestion that America’s justice system is unfair to African-Americans or other people of color. In Perry’s words, “I think our justice system is color blind.”…

Perry’s claim that race plays no role in our justice system simply cannot be squared with the data from his own state. The most distinguishing aspect of Texas’ criminal justice system is its penchant for the death penalty. Over one third of all U.S. executions take place in Rick Perry’s state. Moreover, over 40 percent Texas’ death row inmates are black (121 out of 300 total inmates), despite the fact that only about 12 percent of Texans are African American. So a black Texan is more than three times more likely to be sentenced to die than their representation in Texas as a whole would suggest.

Nor is Texas an anomaly in this regard. In Alabama, just six percent of murders involve black defendants and white victims, but but 60 percent of black death row inmates were convicted of killing a white person. In Colorado, African Americans make up four percent of the population and 100 percent of the death row. And, in North Carolina, prosecutors in capital cases are more than twice as likely to remove a nonwhite juror from a jury pool than to do the same to a white juror.

The statistics are damning enough, but you might’ve notice that — while conservative pundits have been gleefully politicizing Trayvon Martin’s killing — Republicans have mostly managed to keep their big yaps shut about it. The reason is simple: Republicans are terrified of black voters. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be pushing all these voter suppression schemes designed to keep minority voters from voting booths.

But those very efforts, combined with the open joy demonstrated when SCOTUS gutted the Voting Rights Act, were already encroaching on doing more harm than good. They’ve got this whole "missing white voter" plan going and it hinges on the idea that the size of the African-American vote drops when Barack Obama is no longer on the ballot. So they want to be really careful about riling up the voting block they’re currently counting on staying home.

Now, here comes the bottomlessly gaffe-prone Rick Perry to talk about Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman, race, and the justice system. And his completely unhelpful take is that everything’s just fine and all these black people are getting all worked up over nothing. That we shouldn’t change a thing and this is the best possible outcome.

From local school board members seeking reelection to presidential hopefuls, just about every Republican with any sort of brain at all must want to strangle Rick Perry right now.

Ron Johnson said something stupid again

Emphasis mine.

ThinkProgress: Though he insists he holds no personal ill-will towards gays and lesbians, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) sees no need for a law that would make it illegal for bosses to fire someone because of his or her sexual orientation.

In an interview with ThinkProgress at the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s annual conference on Thursday, Johnson argued against the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, a bill in the Senate that would make it illegal to discriminate against LGBT individuals because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. “I don’t particularly like the federal government telling anybody to do anything,” Johnson said. When we asked if he held the same views about laws that protected women and minorities from discrimination, Johnson quickly ended the interview.

So it seems like Ron didn’t do a lot of thinking about the issue before shooting his mouth off about it. How unlike him!

For the record, Wisconsin passed the first non-discrimination law to protect sexual orientation in the nation, making it landmark legislation in the history of civil rights. And you know what’s really weird? Turns out it hasn’t been a problem at all.

Of course, it’s only been on the books for 30 years, so maybe it hasn’t had enough time to collapse civilization and destroy liberty yet.

[photo by Gage Skidmore]

Louie said something stupid again

Raw Story: During a Thursday rant about news that the National Security Agency (NSA) had been collecting phone records from millions of Americans, Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert (R-TX) seemed to be a little confused when he proclaimed that freedom of the press is “granted in the Second Amendment.”

Gohmert noted that NSA spying was just the latest example of executive branch overreach because the Obama administration had also gone after the phone records of Associated Press reporters.

“Many times these phones up here are used by reporters to call members of Congress, who have another constitutional privilege, under the constitutional — under the constitution that provides privilege for the information that is provided for — to a member of Congress,” the Texas Republican explained. “It’s not unlimited.”

“But that’s on top of the freedom of the press that’s also granted in the Second Amendment,” he added.

For the life of me, I can’t understand how this clown keeps getting reelected.

[photo by Gage Skidmore]

Another kid shot in his own home

KSLA: A 3-year-old boy is at LSU Hospital after being shot with a .22 rifle in a North Bossier Parish home Monday afternoon.

Bossier Parish Sheriff’s Office Lt. Bill Davis says deputies were dispatched around 6 p.m. to the home on Scarborough Road off of Butler Hill Road in Benton.

Deputies believe it was an accident that happened when the rifle was knocked over by a sliding glass door after it was bumped by another child.

This keeps happening over and over and over, with sickening regularity. But of course, we shouldn’t do anything about it, because… Well, I’m not really all that clear on the because. Because some people are too fucking stupid to understand cause and effect, I guess.

But good thing the family had that rifle handy, huh? Otherwise, some criminal might’ve busted in and hurt someone in the family. Yes indeedy-doo, a bullet hole in your toddler is really a small price to pay in exchange for keeping your family safe.

[photo by MSVG]

5 year-old kills 2 year-old sister with gun ‘ideally sized for children four to ten years old’

ThinkProgress: On Wednesday, a five-year-old Kentucky boy accidentally shot and killed his two-year-old sister with a gun he’d been given as a birthday present. The weapon, a small rifle, was manufactured specifically for children’s use.

The boy’s weapon was a “My First Rifle” .22-caliber gun from Keystone Sporting Arms’ youth branch, Crickett. Crickett’s website markets itself “especially for youth shooters.” The firearms come in several neon colors, and the website even has a “kids corner” featuring pictures of small children with guns…

Crickett does not manufacture bullets. The company offers books for “Grades 2-3 and up,” and says their guns are “ideally sized for children four to ten years old.”

Yeah, this is real and there’s no shortage of morons who think this is “responsible gun ownership.” Teach the kids about guns early, the reasoning goes, and they’ll be safer gun owners. This same reasoning would put a five year-old behind the wheel of an SUV or in the cockpit of a plane.

Unfortunately, companies like Crickett can get away with selling these things to extremely stupid people because gun manufacturers are immune from liability lawsuits and no consumer safety laws apply to them. Why? Because the NRA, that’s why. They don’t give a fuck if some kid shoots his baby sister with a dayglo kid-gun. They’re just happy someone was stupid enough to buy the bullet.

Again, this is what the NRA and all the gun freaks out there believe is the very best America can do when it comes to firearm regulations. This is the very best way to deal with guns — to not deal with them at all. Look at those photos; some of those kids are basically babies and mom and dad stuck a gun in their hand because they’re that fucking stupid and because the gun culture promoted by the NRA and the Republican Party led them to believe that it was OK.

Do we need laws to protect people from themselves? Yes. And even more importantly, we need to protect children from their braindead, gun-happy parents. This is not the best we can do.

And fuck you if you think it is.

American patriot uses Second Amendment freedoms to take down a dangerous gunman

ThinkProgress: A Lincoln, Nebraska man is recovering from his wounds at a local hospital after shooting himself in the leg during a class on carrying a concealed firearm. According to a local news station’s report, the gun went off when the man was placing it in a holster on his hip. The bullet lodged in his thigh and is not life-threatening.

Beyond the irony of a man shooting himself during a class that was ostensibly intended to teach him about gun safety, this incident highlights the dangers inherent in a society where people routinely carry firearms. Guns are dangerous machines which can accidentally discharge, threatening the gun owner or innocent bystanders.

If Nebraska’s law is anything like Wisconsin’s, this guy will get his permit eventually, despite proving pretty much conclusively that he’s a menace — that is, assuming he’s dumb enough to still want it. These classes are pretty much just formalities and, as a result, jokes. Remember, safety is not the purpose behind these sort of gun/paranoia laws. The purpose is to sell more guns. And you’re not going to get more guns out on the street if people like Quick Draw McGraw here get flunked out of these certification classes. If he wants, he can try again — and again and again and again. It’s the same principle behind opposition to background checks — if someone gets flagged on the check, there’s no sale.

That whole thing about being worried about “federal gun registries” is just propaganda for the weakminded and gullible. Being against background checks is about being able to sell guns to criminals. Period. Just like “concealed carry classes” are just a way to sell them to paranoid clowns.