BoingBoing Offers Insulting Take on “Christmas Gun Ads”
Perhaps BoingBoing should stick to mocking hipsters and reporting on weird toys. But this past Sunday, which happened to be Christmas Day, the news site offered a snide take on past Christmas Gun ads.
The site noted:
On How to Be a Retronaut, a seasonal gallery of Christmas gun ads, including this sugar-addled, gift-crazed lad with a rifle and a thousand-yard stare.
The site Retronaut.co offered all sorts of ads, and things such as tobacco were featured quite differently years ago. Times change and BoingBoing should respect that… but to note the “thousand-yard stare” is insulting and frankly not quite accurate.
The kid in the ad is happy and delighted with his gift. That is hardly the famous “thousand-yard stare,” which originally was coined to “describe the limp, unfocused gaze of a battle-weary warrior.” Quite a difference!
Firing Back: Left Leaning Bloggers Show Bias Against NRA
The blogisphere – at least in the technology and celebrity world – is made up of would-be journalists (and we do mean would-be) living in narrow minded enclaves of New York City, San Francisco and Los Angeles. These people work – if you can call it that – strange hours, live like the hipsters they mock and think they know America better than the land they only fly over.
They mock what they don’t understand or worse just dislike. Because they live in traditionally anti-gun cities, they think it is proper and correct to be anti-gun. So it is no surprise that there has been a blogisphere backlash against the NRA’s efforts to keep pediatricians from asking about guns.
Media watch site Gawker offered a snide take on the issue:
“Is your pediatrician trying to take away your gun? (Probably!) You should move to Florida, where a new law would prevent pediatricians from asking about guns in the home. Thanks, NRA, for telling doctors what they can, and can’t, do.”
“An NRA-lobbied bill in Florida will prohibit doctors, especially pediatricians, from asking patients about their gun-safety. The bill is expected to be signed by Governor Rick Scott. Pediatricians routinely advise parents about seatbelts, bike helmets, etc, but this law will make it illegal for a doctor to offer advice on gun safety unless ‘it’s directly relevant to the patient’s care or the safety of others.’ Comparable legislation is under discussion in North Carolina and Alabama.”
What BoingBoing misses the point on is that many communities have laws requiring children under a certain age to wear bike helmets or sit in child seats, while seatbelts are required by law virtually everywhere!
As we previously asked, where is the line drawn? Why is the issue of guns allowed to be brought up? What is next, how many knives are in the kitchen, whether a family has a wood shop because tools can be dangerous? Perhaps commonsense questions such as “are all potentially dangerous objects locked away,” would suffice? Why is it such a proper that guns are not addressed specifically?
It also brings up another facet of this… would parents be held liable if they lied about the guns even if something tragic never occurs? There is doctor/patient confidentiality but why do doctors have to right to know if patients have firearms? And if doctors are allowed, should your tax preparer know as well?
Are There Rich and Powerful Permits in New York City?
First there were the stories that New York bankers were getting gun permits, and then (as we reported), the word was that they were not.
But then came an interesting story that suggests that there is actually a “rich” or “VIP” permit process in some cities such as New York City that allows for the ultra-powerful to skip the usual process. If this is true – and we have reasons to be dubious – it would truly be something to worry about it. It would mean that the rich, famous and powerful could have guns while the average law abiding citizen cannot. This is something called a parallel system
Here is just a sampling of the article that appeared on tech-blog BoingBoing:
“Permits in this parallel system are not public records. They may be issued from other states. The permits themselves are *fantastic* because they let the holder possess and carry guns in all 50 states and in DC (state-issued permits are much more restricted). They also let the permit holder disregard a lot of state gun laws (things like magazine limitations, assault weapons bans, etc, which are present in California, NY and a few other states). Also, permits within this parallel system are available at lower status / dollar thresholds than within the official systems in places like NYC. In short, this parallel, stealth system is the smart way to go, with numerous advantages.”
Again, we have reason to believe this isn’t real. But if it is… then the second amendment is truly dead.
