I couldn't do it. I'm a weak man, *sigh*. My resolution didn't survive January.

In a post I made on Jan 31 a gunner chimed in with lies so outrageous I just couldn't keep quiet. I won't name him but give odds of 500 to one you know who it is . . .

My post was about gun deaths as compiled in a study by Everytown. It lists all 50 states, gives a grade rating for gun regulation and ranks them by deaths/100,000. With a few anomalies that are easily explained the states with heavy regulation (relatively speaking, as there is NO heavy regulation) have a lower death rate. Every time something like this is posted the gunners chime in with "OH but Vermont!" Well, according to Everytown Vermont just ain't all the fucking great and fits neatly into the regulation/death rate formula.

Knowing this I attempted to save the gunners the exercise and posted the death rate (12/100k) at the bottom of the post. Oh! Nooooo! it's only 2.2!1!!. He foolishly gave a link . . . The link is to a wiki entry. The entry doesn't relate to gun deaths but to intentional homicides which is a tiny subset of homicides which is a subset of gun deaths and ignores everything from suicide, accidental, toddler shootings, mass murders, domestic murders and more categories than I care to list. The definition listed in the piece is so narrow that the Pulse Nightclub shooting would not fit as 'intentional homicide".

I shouldn't be so harsh though. The poor fool has been fed this kind of fetid dingo's kidneys for years by the gun culture overlords. Big lies wrapped around tiny truths. It really isn't his fault that he's so ignorant, he (and all the other gunners) have been indoctrinated for the last 50 years, most of their adult lives, by the toxic rhetoric of GUNZ 1!!1 for the sake of selling more guns.

They should be treated with loving concern, the way we would treat a smoker suffering from COPD after being addicted as a teen by Tabaco advertising.