Arizona state senator Lori Klein loves her pink Ruger pistol so much she just had to show it off to a reporter—by allegedly pointing it directly at his chest.
The pistol has no safety (because that would be crazy) and was loaded when Klein, a Republican, remarked “Oh it’s so cute,” and trained the gun’s laser sight on Arizona Republic reporter Richard Ruelas’ chest, the paper reports.
Ok, the reporter is already showing his ignorance of guns. Many guns, even the most modern, don't have a safety "button" or "switch" that must be clicked in order for the gun to fire. This does not make the gun less safe. The gun does not fire itself. The person holding the gun does. Despite what you read in media reports, guns don't just "go off" unless someone has his/her finger on the trigger and is pulling it.
Klein insists the reporter was not in danger. “I just didn’t have my hand on the trigger,” she said in the Republic's initial account of the incident, which was detailed in a recent story about Klein’s decision to carry her loaded gun into the state Capitol only two days after the Tucson mass shooting that killed six and seriously injured Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, among others.
In this Klein was both right and wrong. She was correct in stating that the reporter was in no danger because she did not have her finger on the trigger. She was wrong in pointing the gun at him in the first place. Apparently Klein was never taught Jeff Cooper's Rule #2 of gun safety: Never let the muzzle cover anything you are not willing to destroy. She should have her CCW license privilege revoked/suspended until she can prove she knows proper gun safety (which is in the training of the gun owner, NOT a switch/button on the gun). The person who trained her should maybe be asked what her safety training consisted of. If Arizona politicians are able to acquire CCW licenses without taking proper safety courses that other Arizona citizens are required to take, this should be fixed, also.
According to Klein’s account, she was pointing the laser sight at a wall at the request of a photographer when the Republic reporter sat down in its path. When Klein and the reporter “noticed the light,” she turned it off and apologized.
Klein said the reporter did not seem uncomfortable at the time, but that she learned several lessons. She said she will not show her gun to anyone again, because it “isn’t a fashion statement or accessory” and “if anyone wants to see a demonstration of any of my gun’s features, it will have to take place at a gun range.”
This is where Klein made a mistake in judgment, and possibly walked into a media trap. A gun is indeed not a fashion statement or accessory. MSM reporters have an agenda, though, and if they can get you to treat the gun as if it were a fashion statement or accessory, they have won the point.
Klein has carried a handgun since 2000, when someone rattled the door of her Moon Valley home. After it took police 10 minutes to respond to her call, she bought a .40 caliber revolver and slept with it.
Here is where the reporter's ignorance and hoplophobia really show up. You see this over and over again when reporters totally ignorant of guns write about them. There are no .40 caliber revolvers. There are .40 caliber semiautomatic pistols, but the .40 S&W cartridge is intended for use only in semiautomatic pistols. Learn the difference, you ignoramus.
Klein, who grew up around guns, first fired a BB gun at age six and went on childhood hunting trips with her father. According to the Republic, Klein has had “informal training sessions on each of her guns and was taught gun safety by her father.”
If her father is alive and his training included pointing loaded guns at other humans, he should have his face slapped. If he's dead and taught her otherwise, he's probably spinning in his grave.
While Klein defends the rights of citizens to carry concealed weapons, she insists that it’s a personal choice. “I don’t like chocolate ice cream,” she said. “Am I going to force you not to have any?”
Because ice cream is exactly like guns.
Klein is stupid to phrase gun ownership in such terms. While keeping and bearing arms is indeed a personal choice, more importantly it's a right guaranteed by the US Constitution and recently affirmed as such by the US Supreme Court. As much as gun-hating hoplophobes such as Slate's Stephen Spencer Davis would like that right to go away, it isn't. Deal with it, MSM jagoff.
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19 comments:
You make FAR too much sense - and therefore, no one on the left/in the media/in Congress (but I repeat myself) will ever listen.
I remember in boot camp at the firing range being told never point your rifle at something you don't intend to kill or shoot. I wonder if there was some kind of subconscious thing going on here. All kidding aside I appreciate your statement at the beginning that firearms don't go off by themselves. I think there is an American Dad episode where this is driven home. If I can find it I'll let you know.
I found the video I wrote about earlier. I posted it on my blog. Hope you like it. http://lucksrants.blogspot.com/2011/07/guns-dont-kill-people.html
@LUCKY: thanks!
Ignoramus? Jeez, Bob, you're such an elitist!
@wally: wouldn't you agree, Walt, that if firearms are going to be legal and widespread in the US, as is in fact the case, that some basic knowledge of them would be advisable? Perhaps we should follow the birth control model, and teach safe gun handling in schools? Boy, wouldn't your side scream at that?
I believe you called the reporter an ignoramus because he didn't know that a .40 caliber cartridge belonged to a pistol, not a revolver. Now that I know that, how am I safer? Not having known that, was I an ignoramus?
@wally: Don't you think that if you're going to publish an opinion piece in a nationally prominent online magazine, you owe it to your readers to be informed on the subject you write about?
And you may rest assured that, if you published a political cartoon showing a drawing of a revolver labeled "Tec-9" or "Glock" or even "Saturday Night Special" I'd call you on it.
Okay, I think I get it. So, say a politician launches on a bus tour of historical sites in order to honor our founders and the events associated with them, and at one of these historical sites, she badly mangles the facts about the events that took place there. By your definition, she's an ignoramus, right?
@wally: touché. I'll counter with a politician who thinks the reason that unemployment is so high is because there are too many ATM machines at banks.
Also, and correct me if I'm wrong, the reporter was not writing about revolvers vs. pistols and their corresponding ammunition. He was writing about a state senator pointing a loaded gun at a reporter. In the context of that story, does it really matter whether the gun was a pistol or a revolver? Granted, reporters should get their facts right, and they should be corrected when they don't, but "ignoramus" seems a bit much.
Uh-oh, who said that about the ATM machines? I have a suspicion it wasn't a Republican....
@wally: Nope, not a Republican. Smartest man in the world, seemingly, with the patience of Job, as Pelosi said today.
Bob, I think you've fallen for a bit of right-wing spin there. Obama never said unemployment is so high because there are too many ATM machines at banks. He said that one thing keeping unemployment high was structural change--of which ATMs were one example. And guess what? If you had read the whole Forbes article, you would have seen that the writer agreed with that. He just took issue with what Obama proposes to do about it.
@wally: "He said that one thing keeping unemployment high was structural change--of which ATMs were one example. And guess what? If you had read the whole Forbes article, you would have seen that the writer agreed with that."
That's not really disagreeing with my statement then, is it? Obama did mention ATM's and ticket kiosks in connection with unemployment.
And frankly, while Palin has flubbed on Paul Revere, I've provided plenty of Obama flubs to match hers, and only one of the two is grossly mismanaging the US economy, even if it was Bush's fault*
(*required disclaimer for the duration of President Barack Obama's administration, unless the economy turns around.)
1. The Nazis started World War II.
2. Albert Speer was an example of a Nazi.
3. Therefore, Albert Speer started World War II.
Now do you see the fallacy?
I may be a braying loudmouth a good part of the time, but when it comes to the economy, I'm the soul of humility. I don't understand economics and I have no clue how to "fix" the economy. I am clueless. And I suspect everyone else is too, only they won't admit it.
@wally: I can't agree that "everyone" is ignorant on how to fix economies. I think that certain economic principles are so well-established that, to coin a phrase you might be familiar with, "the science is settled." Some are so familiar that they have names, such as Gresham's Law.
The problem in the US is that you have competing ideas of how to fix the economy, each championed by one of the two political parties. Obama and the Democrats want to fix things via Keynesian deficit spending, more regulation of business, and higher taxes. Republicans want to fix things via free-market principles of less government spending, less regulation and lower taxes, especially on business.
And yet economic recessions have occurred under both Democratic and Republican administrations.
Once again, I don't know anything about the various economic theories, but I have heard it said that applying a pure theory is impossible today, given the multitude of factors beyond our control. And that the one law that comes into play the most is the law of unintended consequences.
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