Who Kidnapped Charles Blow?

Is Charles Blow's latest column some sort of coded hostage message? His topic is guns and he actually makes some sense. Yes, I wrote that, and he wrote this:

Focus on Illegal Guns

...

Our current discussion about increasing gun regulations often centers on efforts that would mostly affect people who legally buy firearms. Many of them make sense, in theory, but the truth is that they would not be likely to have a huge impact on criminal gun violence, because many of those criminals obtain their weapons illegally.

So, when the gun lobby and gun owners make this case, we must admit that they have a point.

What?!? A NY Times columnist not named Douthat cracking the progressive monolith on "gun owners = bad"?

Mr. Blow continues his tour of the lands beyond the progressive planatation:

Rather than focusing on all guns, the vast, vast majority of which are owned by responsible people and are never used in the commission of a crime, we have to focus on keeping guns out of the hands of this relatively small number of criminals.

People, including the president in his speech and town hall meeting last week, like to compare increasing gun regulations to the way cars are regulated. But they didn’t simply get safer due to regulations. They also got safer because the market desired more safety, as well as anti-theft features. Many of the innovations, carmakers came up with on their own. The gun market doesn’t behave that way.

Furthermore, cars are required to be licensed, registered, insured and periodically inspected. Also, you can’t hide a car the way you can hide a gun. Cars are operated on public roads.

Wow! Nick Kristof was all about the deeply flawed gun-car analogy a few years ago. Now Charles Blow is up in his grill?

I must note that Mr. Blow does recycle one common error also made by Mr. Kristof's when he writes that

"cars are required to be licensed, registered, insured and periodically inspected".

That is all true if a driver wants to operate the vehicle on a public road. if the goal is to leave the car in a private garage and tinker with/restore it, none of the registration or insurance rules apply. But try owning an unregistered handgun in your New York City apartment for self-defense and see what happens if it is discovered. Actually, don't try that.

Mr. Blow continues his brief tour of the dark side:

If we want to truly put a dent in gun violence, we must take some incredibly unpopular steps in some pockets. Safety features — including smart guns that can only be fired by the owner — are going to have to be added to the market. That will be hard to sell because no one wants a gun to fail to because it lacks a charge or due to a technology glitch. One of benefits of traditional guns is that, technologically, they are simple and ancient. There are no batteries or chips.

We are also likely to have to register guns and require insurance. This would be almost impossible, given the gun lobby’s and many gun owners’ current stance and the paranoid fears of confiscation, a fear some liberals feed.

All of Obama's talk about Australia actually registered?

Fortunately there is no need to worry that Mr. Blow will eventually be found wandering in your neighborhood mumbling that guns don't kill people - he eventually finds his way home to a progressive safe space:

Making guns safer and keeping more of them out of the hands of criminals and in the hands of responsible owners can be done, but not as long as many responsible owners are also unreasonable ones.

So gun owners who worry about technology locking up their gun at a desperate moment or fear that Obama and Cuomo are serious about confiscation are now "unreasonable", despite the reasons Mr. Blow just provided?

Maybe he needed to throw the editors a bone.

 

Comments

[Threadkiller]

I apologize too, Cecil. I thought you had directed a statement to me, and I really thought I asked a meaningful question that related.

Yes, I accept the terms.

[Miss Marple]

Stephen Miller ‏@redsteeze 8m8 minutes ago

Good news. About 30 minutes of Obama's speech on the Iran deal was just edited out.

[Cecil Turner]

I just Stroll on by when the conversation turns "birther" or "truther".

Tonight, I guess "the squirrels ARE back in the attic".

It's in the news. It was the years when it wasn't that it was truly obnoxious.

[Cecil Turner]

Yes, I accept the terms.

Thanks. I'll also apologize for that last comment, and avoid such in the future.

[Jane]

JIB,

Why would you capitalize Carter's name and not mine? That is very insulting. But you know that.

Okay I'm going to pledge to ignore the people who bug me. And yes, they are sailors.
~~

Clarice, we'll see. I think Iran is into showing Obama that he's an idiot.

[Gentlejim]

Why would 404 need 30 minutes to tell us the Iran "deal" is bad for all except Iran?

[NK]

A legitimate state escorts or tows a vessel with mechanical difficulty out of claimed waters. It doesn't 'seize' vessel and crew, pirate regimes like the NorKs and Mullahs do that. This highlights the idiocy of handing the Mullahs terrorism $$$$, in exchange for what they consider not to even be a 'binding agreement'.

[Jane]

Actually it's not possible to show Obama he's an idiot.

[Beasts of England]

Our lurker noted the two ships being captured. I'm not finding much on the web about it. Let's hope it's nothing.

[NK]

here is an NBC report: http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/pentagon-2-u-s-navy-boats-held-iran-military-n495031

[Jane]

Fox isn't convinced it's not nothing, nor are they convinced it is.

[Jack is Back (but On Alert)!]

Heh. John Huntsman is still alive and tanned.

[Jack is Back (but On Alert)!]

Jane,

My apologies. Blame fat fingers not me. I have no control over them.

BTW, can someone capsulize what the hell happened in re Iggy being insulted by who and why? I saw some posts by Rick Ballard but they seemed so out of character that I knew they were trolls.

[clarice]

Maybe the republicans can hustle and get a family member of one of the crew to make a statement before the SOTU

[Miss Marple]

Jeb donor on Cavuto who says he will vote for Trump if he's the nominee.

Of course, Jeb is his first choice but he does understand why Trump gets support.

This is a guy who would probably like his money back.

[clarice]

New Trier high school jumps the pc shark:http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/01/12/racial-identity-mlk-new-trier/

[Jack is Back (but On Alert)!]

Maybe the republicans can hustle and get a family member of one of the crew to make a statement before the SOTU

Obama and his crew would just call them liars or misinformed.

[Miss Marple]

Now this has popped up on Twitter:

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/iran-fires-warning-shots-cargo-ship-strait-hormuz/story?id=30644930

[lyle]

Another one of our betters in the GOPe journal ist class let's us know how the real world works:

http://spectator.org/articles/65160/how-help-clinton-win

No hints as to whom he refers.

[Cecil Turner]

This highlights the idiocy of handing the Mullahs terrorism $$$$, in exchange for what they consider not to even be a 'binding agreement'.

The tiny sliver of silver lining is the LEU turnover . . . but I have no idea about the compliance measures or the actual impact on the Mullahs' capability to produce a weapon. I strongly doubt it is as hobbling as the spin would have it.

[Jack is Back (but On Alert)!]

CT,

Are the Brown of daddy's Blue and Red? Aviator living in L,Ville sort makes me wonder. Do Brown pilots never turn starboard like the drivers?

[Jack is Back (but On Alert)!]

...Are You the Brown....

[buccaneer morgan]

New trier is Rumsfeld and David asman's alma mater, well Romans seems on point.

[buccaneer morgan]

Did all the Texan common sense get shaken out of him?

[NK]

MissM-- that story claims that the Mullahs (Rev Guardsmen) seized that merchantman. More piracy.

[jimmyk]

As it happens I have managed to piss off Jimmyk

Really? Like I said, I'm not perfect, but at least I don't think I responded with name-calling and expletives.

Anyway, best not to clutter the thread with more such discussion, so here's a semi-on-topic question: Does Charles Blow pronounce his name as in the word "blow" or like the more common last name Blau (i.e. rhymes with "wow")? I would think the former would have resulted in merciless beatings as a grade-schooler.

[Miss Marple]

Greta Van Susteren ‏@greta 26m26 minutes ago

If Iranians are releasing our sailors,could they throw in Marine Hekmati,Pastor Abedini,Journo Rezain and FBI Bob Levinson ?

[Janet]

Related...our crap media & religion

the late Michael Crichton’s 2002 essay “Why Speculate?”:

Media carries with it a credibility that is totally undeserved. You have all experienced this, in what I call the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. (I call it by this name because I once discussed it with Murray Gell-Mann, and by dropping a famous name I imply greater importance to myself, and to the effect, than it would otherwise have.)

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect works as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward-reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story-and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read with renewed interest as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about far-off Palestine than it was about the story you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

That is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. I’d point out it does not operate in other arenas of life. In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say. In court, there is the legal doctrine of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, which means untruthful in one part, untruthful in all.

But when it comes to the media, we believe against evidence that it is probably worth our time to read other parts of the paper. When, in fact, it almost certainly isn’t. The only possible explanation for our behavior is amnesia.

[Miss Marple]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/01/12/poll-hillary-clinton-dropped-16-points-in-iowa-in-a-month/

[Man Tran]

Rick,

A Great RINO Hunt doesn't make sense in '16 but '18 should keep taxidermists very busy.

I find the added phrase read some time ago as being clarifying:

Hunting them with dogs. :)

[Jeff Dobbs]

new sotu thread....

[Cecil Turner]

JiB,
Yes and no. But not nearly as cool as daddy . . .

[Jane]

No chance these guys will be released before the SOTU is over.

Thanks for the apology JIB. I have no idea why that bothers me so much, but it does.

[Ignatz Ratzkiwatzki]

--BTW, can someone capsulize what the hell happened in re Iggy being insulted by who and why? --

It was nothing. Not worth wasting the time to look it up.

[Cecil Turner]

Classy. Previous apology was implied, please consider it explicit.

[GUS]

Jane, is CAPITALIZATION REALLY THAT IMPORTANT????

Why YES, YES IT IS!!

[JMHanes]

Janet: Excellent excerpt from Crichton!

Clarice:

Fun to see my name in lights! I was reading the Free Beacon's story about Bernie Sanders steering money to various friends and family members, and thinking how utterly disproportionate the scale of Clinton corruption is in comparison. The fact that even such monumentally venal grifting is still not enough to prop her up decisively in the polls is one of the few political bright spots, imo.

[Texas Liberty Gal]

Janet - great link!!!!

[Texas Liberty Gal]

What a dilemma-I hate that the Iranians have seized our vessels but I love that it makes Obama look like a fool. And I feel awful that I feel that way!!!

[cheerleader]

Fox 10 live link to the rally - 10 year "guest" of Hanoi Hilton talking now

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mq5hrUDoYo