And, once again, it’s all the fault of the guns…

…not the fault of the thugs who wield them.

Why doesn’t Leonard Pitts talk about the fact that Jonylah Watkins’ father was the actual target of her killer? Maybe if he hadn’t been tangled up with shady people she’d still be alive. And as for Antonio West’s killer, well, there’s really not much you can say about a 17-year-old who would shoot a baby between the eyes because his mother didn’t have any money. But it’s worth asking where that kid came from and what kind of influences he was under that would cause him to do something like that. Latest news is it might be — wait for it! — gang-related.

Now, many times Pitts has bemoaned the environment which breeds this sort of thing. He deserves credit for that. But maybe he should keep talking about that, because as long as that environment persists, nothing’s going to change.

Someone else who should have been put under the jail…

…but who was instead let out early and — get this — went on to bigger and better things!

Evan Ebel was released from prison more than three months early, largely due to his participation in programs designed to coax troubled offenders from solitary confinement that were championed by the man he is suspected of killing, Colorado prisons chief Tom Clements, authorities said Friday….

While Ebel was disciplined for threatening to kill guards, assaulting other prisoners and being unruly, corrections officials were legally unable to extend the length of his sentence as punishment, spokeswoman Alison Morgan said Friday.

Yet we’re all supposed to believe the guns are the problem. Honestly, I don’t get what the hell is so complicated about all this. Dangerous people should be locked up. Period. Without access to guns, or knives, gasoline, ammonium nitrate fertilizer, or anything else they could use to wreak havoc on the innocent.

Such is how it should be

From the Chron’s Texas on the Potomac blog:

Despite Obama’s efforts, Texas Republicans feeling no pressure to enact new gun laws

Well, good. The only pressure they should be feeling is from their constituents, who are probably telling them to tell the president to take his gun control laws and blow them out his arse.

And damned if that speech wasn’t some grade-A blood dancing. “Shame on us if we’ve forgotten.” No, dude, shame on you for using the deaths of innocents to advocate for laws that wouldn’t have stopped their killer anyway.

After all, he didn’t get those guns legally. They were legally owned anyway. He killed his mother and broke into her safe. (h/t Jeff in comments)

Well, this is intriguing.

From the San Antonio Express-News:

(George) Strait, who’s in the midst of his two-year “The Cowboy Rides Away” tour, will release “Love is Everything” on May 14. The cover art and track listing were released this week.

The intriguing part was found in the track listing for the disc: “I Just Can’t Go On Dying Like This.” For those of you not in the know about all things George Strait, that’s the title of a song Strait himself wrote back in the mid-’70s and recorded when he was on a small Houston-based label; the original recording of the song only got its national distribution on Strait Out of the Box, Strait’s 4-cd career retrospective released back in 1995. It’ll be really interesting to see if this is the same song and if he’s tweaked it in the last few years since he’s started writing more of his own stuff…

A two-fer!

Jim Carrey manages to insult not one but two groups of people — gun owners and Hee Haw fans!

And what would a load of anti-self-defense bullshit be without a penis joke? How original.

As Weer’d once said, it’s sad that the every thing of anti-gunners is of strange men’s wieners.

So we finally get the whole thing now…

…and it’s a thing of beauty:

This comment from the BDR pretty much sums this up for me:

It flat out rocks. The guitar playing is unreal — Wilton is the MAN!

Song structure — Check

Production — Check

Lyrics — Check

Great Vocals — Check

EdBass being EdBass — Check

Scott Rock being Scott Rock — Check

Heavy — Check

Frequency is known Geoff — it’s called Redemption!

So F’ing good! Boys are back. Cant wait for the rest of it. And bringing in Jimbo was pure brilliance. Seriously, all the elements are there, this album is going to be Album of the Year, you watch! Now just win the name in November and all will be right in the world.

Queensryche is back, indeed. Can’t wait to see what the rest of the album holds in store.

Why, hello, old friend!

So, check out what we brought home from the local merchant of death freedom today!

Remington 1911R1, the famed New York company’s entry into the 1911 market. I refuse to call it a clone or a copy just because it isn’t a Colt, for previously stated reasons. I saw a Gold Cup in the same display case but didn’t want to pay $400 more for it than I did this one. And if you’ve been a regular reader, you know that I’ve been lusting after this one for a pretty good while. Can’t wait to see how it shoots…

 

Well, here go more of my libertarian credentials, maybe…

…but I can’t help but think this might be a good thing:

When a Texan buys a concert ticket, is it a license to have a great time or does it become personal property that can be sold or traded?

Texas lawmakers plan to take up the question that has triggered legislative fights in other states and could determine how tickets for concerts, sports or any other major event are sold, resold or even taken away. An attempt to wrangle tickets to the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo last month put a spotlight on the problem.

The rodeo discovered that season ticket holders, sponsors and others who had tickets to a George Strait concert were reselling their tickets, some for as high as $11,000. Rodeo staff decided that reselling the tickets for a higher value violated the terms of the ticket and cancelled 5,000 of them in order to resell the tickets to someone else.

The story never went on to say anything about the ticket brokers that I was bitching about, but I’d like to think they’ll be dealt with, too. A lot of good people’s reputations are taking a hit right now because of the way things are set up. Just as an example, I remember people bitching about the George Strait tickets and how “he is gouging his loyal fans” or some such nonsense. Well, as pissed off as I was about that whole thing, I know damn good and well it wasn’t Strait’s fault. And I don’t think he could have gotten away with dictating to Ticketmaster how they could sell their tickets.

I don’t know. I would hardly say the government would be the first place to turn to fix this, but the current state of affairs is, well, quite unfair. Sure, people talk about a free market, but is it really that much of a free market if one or two big players are crowding it with the express purpose of snatching up the goods to sell them at wildly inflated prices before others can get them at the prices the original sellers deemed a fair-market price? You’d think Ticketmaster at least would have taken action before now. After all, it’s not as if they benefited from anyone charging $10,000 for a front-row seat to that particular show. It’d be great if the private parties involved here would take action first, but if they don’t, then what remains to be done?

“Then they came for the gamers…”

“…and the gun owners didn’t stand up for me because I threw them under the bus.”

With filthy stinking lies, no less. “Don’t blame the gun lobby, responsible for the laws that make it easier to buy a firearm than an automobile.” I will still defend other folks’ rights, but I can fully understand the sentiment here:

First they came for the blacks, and I spoke up because it was wrong, even though I’m not black.

Then they came for the gays, and I spoke up, even though I’m not gay.

Then they came for the Muslims, and I spoke up, because it was wrong, even though I’m an atheist.

When they came for illegal aliens, I spoke up, even though I’m a legal immigrant.

Then they came for the pornographers, rebels and dissenters and their speech and flag burning, and I spoke up, because rights are not only for the establishment.

Then they came for the gun owners, and you liberal shitbags threw me under the bus, even though I’d done nothing wrong.  So when they come to put you on the train, you can fucking choke and die.

So it doesn’t just happen here…

SayUncle, a couple of days ago:

I’ve been listening to the “new rock” station…and by “new rock”, they mean the same shit they are playing when I stopped listening ten years ago with the occasional newish song tossed in.

This reminded me of last weekend when we were driving back into San Antonio from Houston, and we had the radio on 99.5 KISS. The deejay was talking about the reunited Soundgarden and mentioned the band’s new album King Animal…right before they launched into “Black Hole Sun” (which, incidentally, turns 20 years old this year).

And it makes me wonder. What’s the point in having an allegedly modern rock station if it plays little if any modern rock? Of course it’s not as if anyone at Cox Radio gives a shit, apparently, since they’re marketing the station as “San Antonio’s No. 1 rock station” — against two classic rock stations, one of which they own, to boot. (And truth be told I’d rather listen to those.)

Beyond the marketing, though, it certainly calls into question how terrestrial modern rock radio in particular is maintaining its relevance in the age of things like YouTube and satellite radio. From what I can tell it’s doing a piss-poor job, in the case of 99.5 KISS coasting on past glories. Seriously, if a given radio station is going to play music from a certain genre, you’d think it’d play new music from said genre in order to keep itself relevant and vital.

But I’m just a listener. What do I know, right?