The dumbest Christmas card ever

December 6, 2015 • 8:30 am

I thought this was a joke when Matthew sent it to me, but it’s not. It’s the family Christmas card sent by Michele Fiore (from her Facebook page), and reported by CNN.  Fiore’s Facebook message:

“It’s up to Americans to protect America. We’re just your ordinary American family. With love & liberty, Michele.”

The card, showing everybody over the age of two toting handguns or rifles, was put up by Fiore three days before the San Bernardino massacre:

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Fiore is a member of the Nevada state legislature, and I don’t have to tell you what party she represents. She’s also a rabid exponent of gun “rights”. CNN says this:

A lifetime member of the National Rifle Association, the Front Sight Firearms Training Institute and a member of Second Amendment Sisters (according to her bio), the Republican state representative has made responsible gun ownership and Second Amendment rights one of her defining issues, and the theme of her 2016 calendar.

Responsible gun ownership? What’s responsible about putting weapons into the hands of your children?

Here’s the cover of her calendar:

Screen-Shot-2015-11-01-at-2.02.46-PM

Matthew made this comment when sending me the photo: “Outrageous! Three of these children are defenceless!”

I needn’t bang on about this except to say that this is what America has come to. Imagine an MP in Britain getting elected after posting stuff like this! But this ethos is admired by many Americans—and even by some people who have posted at this site. It’s reprehensible and embarrassing. These people make a fetish of their weapons, one verging on mental illness.

165 thoughts on “The dumbest Christmas card ever”

  1. The three youngsters Matthew was “outraged” about will probably get BB guns for X-mas. I can’t wait to see Michele’s “family” card for next year…

    2. They might get a Crickett “My First Rifle”, which come in 22 long and 22 short, both able to kill an adult.

      It’s not unknown for parents in the USA to give a 5 year old one of these firearms for Christmas.

      5-year-old Kentucky boy fatally shoots 2-year-old sister:
      http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/01/us/kentucky-accidential-shooting/

      “Her family kept the Crickett rifle in what they considered to be a safe spot, Cumberland County Coroner Gary White told the CNN affiliate.”

      The mother was quoted in another article “We thought it was unloaded.”

      “In this part of the country, it’s not uncommon for a 5-year-old to have a gun or for a parent to pass one down to their kid,” he said.

      “Riddle said she is devastated, but comforted knowing that her granddaughter is in a better place.”

      “It was God’s will. It was her time to go, I guess,” she told WLEX. “I just know she’s in heaven right now and I know she’s in good hands with the Lord.”

      Does a 5 year old child has any concept of death and the responsibilities that comes with a firearm?
      http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/07/26/when-do-kids-understand-death/

      1. Although Obama is principally to blame, the parents too must bear some responsibility for this tragedy. What did they expect when they gave a rifle to their 5-year-old son, whilst leaving their 2-year-old daughter unarmed and unable to defend herself?

          1. How exactly is president Obama to blame for someone else’s child shooting their sibling to death? This is the great example of the paranoid hatred too many in this country have of our President. Please get sensible and put blame whe it belongs for children’s misdeeds…on THE PARENTS. Sheesh.

      2. Speaking of parents who think their children should emulate Rambo, remember last year’s shooting of a gun instructor by a 9 yr old girl taking lessons in using an Uzi? The girl could not handle the gun firing on automatic and the recoil made the gun go strait up. A bullet struck the instructor in the head and killed him.
        Now that girl is 10 years old and must still remember the incident. I doubt she will ever forget.

      3. It was her time to go, I guess

        And I think it’s time for for her mom to go to prison.

        1. That’s second most reprehensible part of the story, the first being that they gave a 5yo a gun: the parents passing the responsibility buck (which should’ve stopped with them) to their imaginary friend. Talk about not learning your lesson!

          “It was god’s will. Nothing w could’ve done. All for the best, I guess.”

          I can’t even.

  3. Typical American family indeed. Never mind the guns, just look at the number of kids. I’m surprised she has time for politics.

  6. Love you Jerry!
    Slowly, Put your cat down.
    I know its hard, but please follow the commands.
    Now slowly back away.
    Now, wash the cat off of your hands.
    Step outside and take a deep breath of fresh air.
    Let the Obama out. You will feel better.
    Now, remember when we were kids? Schools had their own rifle teams that competed with other schools w/o anyone getting shot?
    I know, it was a long time ago. before rap music and the gangster cult of glorifying weapons for illegal uses.
    Remember? before hollywood demonized every gun as an instrument of the destruction of humanity?
    I agree up watching the lone ranger. good guys had guns. So did bad guys. The good guys always win. (See Steven Pinker.)
    We are evolving into a safer civilization because of more guns, not less.
    When was the last time you went to the range and fired some shots off? It was fun the last time you did I bet. Or did your feline buds get in your way?
    Keep up your good work, but leave the Obama based gun toxins out of it. You will feel better.

      1. That link said 1,584 incidents of gun violence for defence and then 1,601 accidents. So you’re just as likely to accidentally shoot someone as you are to defend yourself.

      2. I know I probably sound like a broken record, but I think it bears repeating. (As does the overall stats you gave, I’ll add there were over 300 mass shootings in 2014 in the US.)

        Some 200 toddlers (aged 1 to 5) kill themselves, other toddlers, children or adults in the US every year with unsupervised firearms. Many more are wounded suffering crippling disabilities or disfigurement. It happens on a regular basis, because any idiot can buy a gun without the least bit of training or education, and they do, in droves.

        When a firearm owner’s gun is found by a toddler and the toddler kills himself or someone else, the gun owners are most often patted on the head and told it’s just an unavoidable accident.

        Or God’s will to take them home.

        But not the fault of the owner who left a loaded pistol in an unlocked drawer or closet where children play.

        Toddlers regularly shooting people in the US shows me more than anything else that America’s gun laws and attitudes are lax and broken.

        Only 25% of legal firearm owners are ever charged with any crime in these tragedies.
        There are only laws concerning firearm storage in 18 states. In some of those states the owner can not be charged unless the toddler brandished the gun in a public place!

        In the majority of states the authorities treat these shootings as a tragic accident, not as the preventable negligence it is.

        ‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens
        http://www.theonion.com/article/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-nation-where-this-36131

        To be fair, I probably wouldn’t keep repeating these stats if it didn’t keep happening so distressingly often, and if so many Americans didn’t act as if it’s all perfectly normal.

        1. “It happens on a regular basis, because any idiot can buy a gun without the least bit of training or education, and they do, in droves.”

          Gun ownership certainly does seem to be a requirement among the Cletus demographic.

      3. This reminded me of ‘Chiefs’, an excellent miniseries from 1982. The scene that begins at 18:00 has stuck with me ever since I first saw it. While I like the concept of having his son putting it back where he found it, I hope he then put it somewhere much safer.

        youtube.com/watch?v=fq1sgujG4ps

    3. “Evolving into a safer civilization because of more guns?” That does not make sense to me.

      1. It might take a couple of treatments of ‘Let The Obama Out.’
        Rest assured you will have a different opinion once you stop drinking and inhaling the Obama virus.
        And Im a democrat.

          1. Reading between the lines of some posts here, I imagine myself critiquing the diatribe as a connoisseur of wine would describe a freshly discovered New World red.
            With this post I am getting ailurophobe with subtle racist overtones. Then we get a really heady burst of Rose tinted glasses.
            A snarky, earthy odour of patronising reference to our host’s field of expertise surfaces and assaults the tongue.
            Then the ‘Piece de resistance’ of another helping of ailurophobia and less subtle racism finish.
            Leaving a mouldy finish to the palate.
            Altogether deplorable!

          4. I also have a number of cases of a slightly medicinal red. As a male of early middle aged years who is noticing that his nocturnal micturition is becoming more frequent, it is a delight. The grape? A rather cheeky Pinot Moor!

        3. Keeping firearms out of the hands of people on the terrorist watch list — that Obama and his radical gun-control ideas, huh?

          Is the “Obama virus” endemic to Muslims, or just something the President picked up neonatally in Kenya?

    4. First of all: WTF?

      Second:

      “When was the last time you went to the range and fired some shots off? It was fun the last time you did I bet. “

      So “it was fun” is a barometer on how we should act or what we should allow?

      I remember many things that were “fun” when I was younger – highway speeding/races in our cars for instance. That was really fun!
      Does that mean, on reflection, I think it was a good idea? Er..no.

      Part of being responsible is understanding when an activity has wider consequences than the blast you happen to get from it at the time.

      1. It was not much fun when I last went to the gun range and fired some shots off. It was when I was 16. We had this army thing at school and were made to fire a light machine gun at an army range. We were not provided with ear plugs. I was unable to hear anything for two days, and my left ear was permanently damaged.

    5. You, kimberyote, have violated a couple of Roolz here, including telling me what to post about. You’ve made a snarky post that doesn’t advance the discussion but makes the completely unsubstantiated claim that guns are making the U.S. safer. See the comment buy GBJames for evidence against your ridiculous assertion.

      When you can leave out the snark and give us some evidence in favor of your claim, post it on some other website. And I didn’t say anything about Obama in this post.

      1. Fist-pumping stuff!! No guns required for that!! As if the post was not disturbing enough!!

    6. “We are evolving into a safer civilization because of more guns, not less.”

      Odd, then, that the safest places in the world have the fewest guns.

      1. I’m more offended that this person doesn’t really understand “evolution”. 😉

        1. I think you underestimate their strategy.

          1. Expose your neck to UV to increase the mutation rate.
          2. Inbreed to expose the recessive alleles to selection.
          3. Increase birth rate.
          4. Increase death rate.

          I have no idea what they think they are evolving into, but the gun fetishists do seem to have worked out how to speed up the process.

    7. A paragraph from my latest post on my website:

      The denial that the United States has a gun problem by so many politicians and opinion leaders in that country is scary. They’ll blame anything for the number of murders except the prevalence of guns. Movies, video games, liberals, gun free zones, refugees, immigrants, gangs, anti-gun laws, attacks on Christianity, and not enough prayer in schools are just some of the excuses they’ve come up with. The problem is, all those things are either the same or more prevalent in every other Western democracy, and the rest of us do not have this problem. We watch the same movies, play the same video games, are mostly more liberal, we have no need to establish gun-free zones because people don’t carry hand guns – (in NZ not even the police do, except the diplomatic protection squad), we welcome refugees and immigrants, we have gangs too, our anti-gun laws are much stronger, we’re much less religious, and we don’t have prayer in schools. Most of us don’t even pledge allegiance to our flags. Shock, horror!

      The post includes a graph of US gun murders vs a few countries elsewhere in the West. It’s about Fox New’s coverage of the San Bernadino marracre. You can read it here if you’re interested: http://www.heatherhastie.com/aue-tenei-wiki-5-december-2015-california-massacre/

      1. Your analysis seems right on. I enjoyed reading your post.
        It must be hard to sit through all that Faux News yellow journalism…but, I guess somebody has to do it.

        1. Thanks very much 🙂

          Some of it is too much for me too, and I can’t bear to watch it. Sean Hannity falls into that category, as did Mike Huckabee when he had a Fox show. As it is, I spend a lot of time yelling at the TV! From my blog, you’d think I just about only watched Fox, because it’s what gets me riled up enough to write. Other news channels I rely on for, you know, news. 🙂

          1. You may be risking permanent brain damage watching that channel. Just looking at the many republicans around this area I’m pretty sure that was a major cause along with way too much time in their 17 or so churches.

          2. There is a positive side: when I get into an argument with a conservative, I always know what they’re going to say because I’ve heard it all before on Fox. So I’ve always got the counter arguments ready and I don’t suffer from “coming up with a really good response at 3am the next morning” syndrome.

          3. Keep your nitroglycerin tablets handy. We’d all like to keep you around a while longer.

    8. Yes, these people look just like I remember from the Good Old Days of high school rifle teams. And whose grandma didn’t carry an uzi-look-a-like (I know it’s not an uzi, it’s just designed to be scary looking)?

      Face it, these people are suffering from a sickness. Not all gun owners are like these people, but these people are not helping your cause.

      1. At the very least, “put your cat down” was mildly amusing

        Kittehs can be very dangerous…

        Little ninjas

  7. The Wild West is still with us. Even in the East.
    There seems to be a strong attraction in the U.S. to the mid-1800s when west of the Mississippi there was little law and order. People were on their own, which makes life hazardous and from a distance more romantic. Growing up on TV westerns like Paladin, The Rifleman, and Gunsmoke, I learned to admire those superheros of the time. The Civil War and the shoot-em-up Wild West are too recent in cultural memory not to have this influence.

    1. Sure Rick. But then you were suppose to grow up and realize you were just watching the movies. Also, if you look at any of the real history of the so called gun slinging days, most of it never happened.

      Kind of like letting Santa go. Hollywood can make war look fun…but it’s not.

      1. I agree, but what is problematic is that societies, too, have their juvenile phase. People persist in there romantic fantasies about the wild west just about the same way they cling to their bibles. I think the appeal of the libertarian movement is another symptom. The U.S. culture is still in it’s juvenile phase to a large extent. It will take another century or more to evolve past all that.

        1. Such it is with the optimist who thinks we have another century to evolve past this?

          Look at that photo on the xmas card and tell me there is evolution going on there. At least any except in reverse.

          1. Think of it like the plot of green house gas forced global temperature. Change is often not a smooth curve but a saw tooth. The photo on the xmas card I’m looking at is a spastic jolt on the optimistic swing toward a more civil society (but don’t expect utopia).

    2. I imagine that for a number of young people that’s also the appeal of joining Daesh. A clean slate, “frontier life” and all that. But they must quickly discover it’s nowhere as romantic as the brochure implied.

    3. Yeah, the calendar doesn’t bother me so much because it just reflects a common fascination with the Western motif. It is a cowboy scene, complete with six-shooters and a wide open ranch setting. It’s not my style, but it’s not grotesque. The Christmas card is grotesque and telegraphs a disturbed mindset.

  8. I do believe that the gun fetish exhibited by some Americans is a mental illness. My nephew whose son was killed by an accidental, self-inflicted rifle shot still advocates gun ownership. He posts anti-gun-control platitudes on his Facebook page which have increased after the San Bernardino shootings.

    1. “Mental illness” is ableist.

      Yeah.

      The SJWs admonished anyone who said that the PP shooter was mentally ill. Because we have to pretend that mental health is all rainbows and unicorns and that the mentally ill do bad stuff at times.

      No, we are just supposed to blame it on “assholery”

      Btw, “that storm was crazy” and “right wing nutjob” have all been deemed stigmatizing to the mentally ill and are now off limits.

      Yes, I spent the weekend arguing with SJWs over cultural appropriation, Mizziu, and Namazie. I’m still reeling from it.

      And apparently hate speech is illegal in the USA!

      2. And the irony in all this, as I pointed out in another thread, is that somehow the SJWs are blind to the ableism inherent in using “-phobia” as a synonym for willful hatred or bigotry (as in Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, etc.). Phobias, after all, are actual clinical conditions that real people suffer from. How is not offensive and ableist to equate a phobia with a character flaw such as bigotry? How is using “-phobia”/”-phobic”/”-phobe” as a term of derision any different than using “crazy” or “retarded” as one? I’m half surprised that they haven’t caught onto this and ditched the -phobia terms in favor of Islamo-bigoted, trans-bigoted, etc.

      3. Ah, the joy. If you have the diversity of friends I do, you may find yourself arguing with a deranged birther and a SJW in the same hour… it makes one’s head spin and doesn’t seem fair… I should only have to deal with one kind of crazy, but I’m not, I’m surrounded.

      1. The Onion was always just reporting the straight news, we just didn’t know it before the internet.

  10. I think that people such as these who need to flaunt their weapons at every opportunity are using them as a proxy for their contempt of liberals and Obama. These people see a changing America, particularly demographically, and are scared of this. The guns serve symbolically as a resistance, certainly futile, to the inevitability of change.

  11. Maybe the Xmas card from Ms Fiore should cause a contest we can name – Moron for a day. It’s the best term I could think of in two seconds.

    Competition could come from the president of Liberty University, Jerry Falwell Jr. who just the other day encourages students to carry guns to school. He said, “we could end those Muslims before they walk in.”

    Should be lots of competition for this one.

    1. Trump wants to – “…move ’em on, head ’em up, round ’em up, cut ’em out, head ’em in, raw hiiiiiide!”

    2. Jerry Falwell, Jr. and others like him don’t think before they screech. We’ve all seen that police officers, who allegedly know how to use hand guns and practice with them, often miss their intended targets. Imagine a lecture room full of armed Liberty University students with no training and experience trying to shoot a terrorist. There would be bullets going in all directions and they’d hit lots of fellow students, at which point the terrorist could say “thank you very much”, and leave.

    1. I think this a family of real thinkers. And they have provided the kids with their own drones that fly too high to be in the picture.

  13. And either Michelle is also too dumb to know left from right, or ‘Lili’ and ‘Jake’ have very surprising names for their appearance …

  15. Why just ‘verging on mental illness’?

    Is it not crystal clear that about half of Americans are just fucking batshit crazy?

    Why is this so? Where is this going?

    1. Maybe we could define civilized society as one in which the batshit crazy half don’t have the upper hand.

    2. If you have cancer, which I believe is a fungus

      Well, I believe it is a kind of gunpowder poisoning that can only be cured by ridding the world of gunpowder.

      Belief is what matters!

  18. Matthew made this comment when sending me the photo: “Outrageous! Three of these children are defenceless!”

    You just can’t see the suicide nappies.

  19. “… We’re just your ordinary American family …”

    Starting to worry that there’s more truth in that than one might hope.

  20. “verging on mental illness?” Just verging?

    Naw, I’m fairly convinced that horse left the barn long ago.

    I have little doubt that the voices coming from Faux News, Alex Jones, Michael Savage, Rush Limpbrain, Jim Bakker and John Hagee are blasted non-stop throughout the day as they go about their “normal” lives.

    Which begs the question: is deliberately choosing to listen to these voices a manifestation of one’s mental condition or is it the case that it’s simply the listening that drives one batshit crazy enough to pose for this family holiday picture?

  21. It’s just so creepy. The family picture and the Calendar: it’s people happily advertising “Look at us! We carry a weapon that could kill you!”

    1. That’s almost certainly the appeal: asserting one’s position of dominance through intimidation, subtle or not. You better not make those smiles go away, is the implied message.

  23. The Sun and The Daily mail keep showing photos of people posing like them, the only differences are in the decorations and clothes. They keep warning us defenceless Brits that these people are coming over here to hurt us and to turn our country into theirs.

  24. Now you see what you’re up against. Whenever the clamour of firearms prohibition rises, so does support for Mrs. Fiore.

    1. Support for Mrs. Fiore and her ilk will slowly fade as wagon trains finally reach Nevada in large numbers, and the railroad arrives from both coasts with a gold spike.

  25. For anyone that doesn’t understand what it is when some of us talk about American “gun culture”, there should be no confusion now. For non Americans, you know that weird feeling you are getting right now? That’s what you have to put up with when you live there. It is absolutely surreal. And not all gun toters are crazy or unreasonable. Completely normal people want to walk around armed.

    1. I might want a bit more evidence of that “normal”? If they really want to walk around in town or in the city, packing a gun, we need more than a hello and if the pupils are not dilated to a great degree. Already we know that belonging to or being a member of the legislature or even running for president does not indicate normal. You may be creating a new normal that is not.

      1. I will give you an example I’ve used on here before. More than once, I’ve been on a forum that has a “anything else” section. This one was for a certain kind of car. In it, a conversation started up about what kind of gun the poster could get his wife. Many chimed in saying what gun their wives carry and that some of the suggested hand guns would only make a “little hole”. They wanted the kind that could reliable kill but it couldn’t be too big because the little wife was a small person.

        I’ve seen this discussion come up more than once. And I’ve seen people who we would never consider to be rabid gun nuts talk in a similar way – other atheists like Seth Andrews (The Thinking Atheist) who owns hand guns to protect himself and his family.

        These people aren’t crazy or fanatical – they are pretty regular every day Americans living in a culture that promotes guns for personal safety — in other words, in a gun culture.

    2. As a non-American, I am not all that perturbed with your gun culture. In fact, there are vibrant gun cultures outside the US. We do not have the benefit of the 2nd Amendment, which makes your country unique. I own guns and do plan of getting my concealed carry permit (or equivalent in my country).

      But please, Ms gun hater, do not lump all non-Americans together. Some do like guns. Some don’t, but hey, those are usually subjects of a monarch so they don’t have the same freedoms the rest of us enjoy.

      3. Er, what freedoms are those? The freedom to have little (or large) holes poked in me by hot pieces of lead?

        Thanks, but I’ll happily remain a subject of Her Most Gracious Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second. Seems like a good trade-off to me.

    3. I came across this last week:

      http://www.vox.com/2015/12/4/9845146/mass-shootings-gun-control

      The section headed

      “Guns have become a last-ditch effort to impose control on a world slipping away”

      sounded plausible to me (but “plausible” is not necessarily “true”), and I don’t live in the USA so don’t know for myself. Would anyone on this blog who does live there like to comment on whether it is accurate?

      1. That’s a good article in my opinion. I’m no expert, but it seems like a plausible explanation of the status of the issue in the U.S. The article is clear in stating that the research isn’t in yet. The analysis relies on plausible explanations backed by preliminary investigations. It’s not going to be definitive for a long time if ever. Unfortunately, some issues are too provocative to remain simmering slowly while being studied. Sometimes political action gets done simply because enough people are upset enough about the status quo. So, as the article points out, it might just come down to political numbers and brute political force before change can happen. Even without final certainty about what causes what. A large majority of Americans want stronger gun laws, and I think eventually they will get it.

      2. It’s interesting but IIRC, the psychological reports mentioned in that article have been discredited.

  26. The calendar is revealing. People of this stripe seem to base their whole identity around the 2nd amendment. It’s certainly the only part of the constitution that holds their attention.

    1. Some of us actually support all of the bill of rights (I am a card carrying member of the NRA and ACLU), unlike the gun grabbers who want to repeal one of our enumerated rights or to deny it as an individual right. So much for being freedom-loving. They only want the rights that jibes with their political persuasion.

      1. No, they want the rights that enable us to live together without fear of being killed by your neighbor.

      2. That’s interesting Dan. Do you think of the Bill of Rights as a single-item, take-it-or-leave-it deal? That if you accept parts of it you must accept all of it? Seems to me that it’s just ten amendments to a constitution, some of which might be good and some might not. Treating it as an unchangeable monolith seems to me much like the way believers treat their holy books.

    1. It would be dumb if it turned off her supporters. I doubt it does that. I expect it’s quite smart for her purposes.

  29. First let me say that I am writing from England. I have to say that this image made me laugh out loud, and I mean literally, not in the rather overused LOL sense. These people really are crazy, you can imagine how they appear from over here across the pond.

    However, this thought made me think of another comment that I have recently made on a post about shoddy workmanship. The OP was mainly about the professionalism of German construction workers compared with their British counterparts, after commenting about that I also wrote this:

    “The people that impress me the most are the Americans. We sell american products as well as our own and their approach to customer service is very impressive. Their product is not perfect but it is constantly being updated and improved and the vast majority of the improvements really are improvements. I’m sure you know what I mean when I say that some companies improve their products backwards. A big fly in the ointment is their lack of metrication but we can’t have everything.”

    It’s a funny old world.

    1. I think that we Americans have much to thank the Japanese for in regards to improving our automobiles. In the ’70s American cars were often poorly designed and built with many flaws b/c the workers did not care. Then the Japanese cars became popular, and that was a very traumatic shock to the system. I certainly cannot declare that our cars are even now equal to Japanese or European counterparts, but they are far far better than they were a few decades ago thanks to the competition.

      1. It wasn’t the workers who didn’t care, it was primarily the company executives who didn’t care. They simply ignored the competitive threat and had their asses handed to them by the Japanese manufacturers.

        1. And it was the Japanese who actually took Henry Ford’s ideas and created “The Toyota Way” when it comes to Lean manufacturing. American car companies thought loyalty was enough and underestimated the importance of quality to the buying public.

          1. In this case it was industrial equipment that I was referring to rather than cars. Much the same thing happened in the UK particularly with regard to motorcycles. During the seventies most of our car industry was state owned so that didn’t help.

  30. As a resident of Nevada since 2009, I can only feel ashamed that someone like this could get elected. She does not represent me.

    1. Well, let’s not prejudge her based on this single issue. Maybe her unwavering support for the Bill Of Rights also means that she believes prayer has no place in public schools. Heck, she may even be enlightened enough to think that gays should be treated the same as normals, provided they don’t shove it in our face all the time and stay away from the children.

      But I’m putting words into her mouth, perhaps she’s just a normal Republican.

      1. Well, I did a quick check. Seems she was the only Republican assembly member to vote to lift the ban on same-sex marriage, and vote in favor of legalizing medical marijuana. Don’t know about her religious views.

        1. Well, that’s something.

          Maybe she has a sense of humor? If so, that could change the impression also.

  31. I’ve just noticed that they are all barefoot or in socks. Oddly endearing. Presumably, Michele was anxious that they should all remove anything that might accidentally damage her polished wood floor?

  33. In The Australian editorial today, summarizing the effectiveness of the banning of private ownership of automatic weapons in Australia “The Howard government, after the 1996 Port Arthur massacre, showed the way. More than 650,000 weapons were removed. The homicide rate from firearms dropped 42 per cent over the following seven years. And since 1996 Australia’s firearm mortality rate has dropped from 2.6 per 100,000 people to under one. In the US it is 10. In the 18 years before Port Arthur there were 13 mass killings in Australia; there have been none on a similar scale since”. And yet your NRA debates those figures?

  34. What is it with these “One-L” Micheles? Bachmann is Manson-eyed crazy, and Fiore isn’t any better. Maybe if their mothers had used the more usual spelling – Michelle – their daughters might have turned out better.

    Of course the kids in that photo are ready to go out and stand their (play)ground.

  36. Oh hell, I need to get something clear. I advocated that the US should vote for more women in power. My reasoning was to change the gun toting political climate by maternal sensitivities as women are not bound by male machismo who feel at risk of been seen as weak. You need a seachange and women could provide a male dominated environment the will to make gun law changes, or so I thought..
    THIS is not the kind of women I had in mind.
    Funny though, I thought Xmas was about goodwill and peace, not arming yourself to the teeth.. like,
    YOU will have a merry Xmas and happy holiday,
    because me and my gun toting family say so.
    And this, “It’s up to Americans to protect America.”
    Her family is going to fight for you all, down to the last baby??
    Does she not realise the US has one of the biggest arsenals and military on the globe and a heavily armed police force.
    Fear not only makes people sick it can look ridiculous.

  38. Just google “black panthers california reagan”, and see the pictures of the black panthers carry rifles on the steps of the capitol. Governor Reagan happily signed the Mulford Act, in 1967, prohibiting carrying loaded weapons in public. The NRA fully supported the Act.

    It all depends on who has the weapons. There is of course no way to have a law that says “only good guys can carry loaded weapons.” Either everyone can, or nobody can. Which makes more sense?

    1. Perhaps Democrats could find some old Black Panthers to enlist into the gun control cause? At the very least, it might be fun to watch.

      1. I am seriously thinking about immigrating to Canada eventually but I’ve heard that it’s somewhat difficult for Americans to do so – Canada doesn’t want us (and I can hardly blame them). Is that true?

        1. I don’t know what the immigration picture looks like in Canada today. If one has a profession of needed skill I would think they would appreciate the support. I don’t think they are suffering much from over population yet.

  40. Actually, it’s just possible that it’s meant to be funny. If so, well, it’s not very funny but I have a different view of attempted humor than serious expression of tastes.

  42. It’s up to the govt. to defend the nation against foreign terrorism. It’s up to local and state law enforcement to protect citizens from domestic crime. If citizens such as Fiore feel this is inadequate then fix the problem. The solution is not untrained citizens doling out vigilante justice with automatic weapons. This only destabilizes civilized societies.

    1. Yes, when home invasions and violent attacks only lasts seconds, I am glad that the national average response time by law enforcement is 10 minutes. At least they can attempt to give my bloody corpse CPR.

      As a recovering liberal, I do not overly rely on the nanny state.

      1. I guess that recovery requires insertion of a giant ego such as the one owned by Donald Trump where he goes from sitting on the private jet to defending all of us from the big bad govt. When the home invaders come to get you, please rely on the Donald, cause he knows what’s best. Maybe he can build a wall around you.

        2. Well, given the risks, I certainly hope Dan here is well trained enough to swing the odds in his favor. 100 homicides in the course of burglaries compared to orders of magnitudes more deaths due to suicides and accidental shootings would seem to indicate that the average gun owner is not well trained enough to lower his or her risk of death by owning a gun. It reminds me of the people who are willing to drive cross country to avoid the risk of an airplane crash.

  43. LOL, you sound like the snowflakes you criticize Jerry. I feel safer with trained kids handling guns than ignorant biology professors.

    1. Do you ever take a moment to reflect and consider how paranoid statements like that sound? To feel “safer” among kids carrying guns than among unarmed biology professors? Just let that sink in. What kind of fear-based world do you live in?

      It’s like saying the world is safer with nuclear weapons than without nuclear weapons. It’s fundamentally untrue.

      I say all this knowing full well that your side has already won and there is little to no hope of ever turning the tide. But if human history is any indication, eventually civilization gets it right. Here’s hoping.

          1. I’m usually not on here this late. Must be when all the crazies come out. Maybe PCC will handle this tomorrow.

      2. There aren’t enough synonyms for “stupid” in all the languages of the world to cover either that Christmas card or Dan’s comment.

    2. If receiving “training” means that an 8yo kid will be able to handle a gun safely, then why don’t we let 8yos drive? How about drink? Vote? All we have to do is train them, right? Training can totally compensate for the fact that they’re 8, right?

      I’m sure you’d rather be strapped into a chair in a room full of 8yos and loaded guns than strapped into a chair in a room full of biology professors grading tests.

  44. “It’s reprehensible and embarrassing. These people make a fetish of their weapons, one verging on mental illness.”

    I completely agree. A couple weeks ago on Facebook a friend from high school posted a picture of his two year old daughter smiling, holding a massive assault rifle. The picture was littered with positive comments from his wife and other friends. He’s also a police officer (Chicago suburbs). The whole thing made me physically ill.

    1. I wonder who fathered (and mothered) those kids. Since they are good Christians, I’m sure the parents are married and conceived after the wedding.

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