South Dakota: Turn 21 and buy a gun, or else

It's too bad they're not serious.  A legislative proposal would require every South Dakotan  to buy a gun  upon reaching the age of 21  1/2.

The weapon would need to be "sufficient to provide for (the citizen's) ordinary self-defense"

The  lawmakers are just funnin' with ya though. It's a spoof of the Obama health bill's requirement that you buy gummint-approved health insurance.
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Funny that it happened there, however. In the first place, South Dakota is a peaceful place where about 99 per cent of the folks go about their daily lives with a mind set on cordiality, courtesy, and minding their own business. And enough of that group already carry guns to be a real moderating influence on the other 1 per cent.

So they probably don't need it as bad as Kennesaw did.

All across these 57 states...

Do you feel as though you're surrounded by a cluster of dimwits?

Right you are, Johnny. Fewer than half of your fellow citizens -- ordinary folks -- know Jack Schidt  about the country, its history, its government.

And since these Snooki watchers are entitled to vote, it comes as no surprise that their elected officials are even dumber.

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The test is a nice way to pass five minutes of the current end-of-the-world storm global warming episode.

H/TKurt

Yes, Travis McGee was that good

And we have it on excellent authority, courtesy of the Harvard Business School Alumni Review. It offers a letter to John. D. from an admirer:

Dear Mr. MacDonald, Would you please send me Travis McGee?…. I have read all the books you wrote and I am desperate because there are no more….I am distributing your books here in Europe, and everybody is deserting everybody because nobody will sleep with anybody when they have a new book of yours.”
(Marlene Dietrich, 1975)


Younger readers may wonder, "Whoozat?"

Hoplophobe hoot

This guy is news editor of the Grand View University newspaper in Des Moines. He is presumably unarmed, but terrifying. In a piece bemoaning  the recent  Iowa shall-issue law he writes:

I don't agree with police officers being able to shoot when they feel necessary but at least they are trained.

So, Devlin, you don't agree officers should shoot when, for instance, they desire to inhibit a crack-rattled 250-pound thug coming at you fast with a Louisville Slugger?


Of, if a cop makes a mistake, that the unnecessarily dead should be comforted because the bullet in his brain was not fired by an untrained amateur?


I suppose it's possible to believe that I cherry-picked the item, looking for the worst possible paragraph. (We've all written some stinkers, haven't we?)


No, down a little further:


The exception to carry guns should rely solely in law enforcement and military because I have never heard of a purely positive outcome after one has been fired.


What's been fired? A lawman? A National Guard PFC? (See Wagner's advice to high school freshmen on making referents clear.)  And, setting aside the tortured syntax, do you intend to spend your journalism career making universal pronouncements based on things you personally have or haven't heard?


Or what you hope, without actual thought?


I hope the clean background checks are enough to categorize people as sane enough not to incite a shootout with other gun carriers.


I see.  You hope shootouts are limited to folks with guns shooting it out with folks who have no guns. 


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Ladies and gentlemen, we all have bad days, and maybe Dev was suffering through one, manifested in marginal literacy and more than marginal incoherence throughout the piece. 


On the other hand, we might be dealing with the error President Obama committed Tuesday night when he told congress and the world that every youngster "should have access to higher education."


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H/T to Between Two Rivers where, by the way, there is yeoman work in keeping track of local efforts to gut the shall-issue law.