A Chicken Is Not Pillage

A Tweet Of Purist Stupidity

Austin Knudsen, state representative from Culbertson, West Dakota, posted a tweet so stupid it should be on one of the Buzzfeed listicles.  The Billings Gazette had a fine editorial coming out against guns being allowed on college campuses.  Knudsen's response is nothing short of sweet terrible idiocy:

 

The Gazette gets it wrong again re guns on campus. By their logic, more fire extinguishers will just cause more fires. #mtleg #mtpol

— Austin Knudsen (@RepKnudsen) February 12, 2015

The stupid is akin to fire ants noshing on one's nutsack, it burns so bad.  On the very day that we discover that an asshole killed 3 people over a parking obsession, and another asshole got sentenced to prison for shotgunning to death a person he set up to die, Knudsen argues against himself and thinks that clever.  I don't have enough hands for the facepalm this deserves.

I react so strongly to this twit (tweet) for 2 reasons.  1)  I know that there are dim people out there who will actually think Knudsen's quip makes sense.  Somebody voted this moron into office, yes?  2)  He actually, deep in his ignorant heart, thinks he's using logic.  No.  No he's not.  In order for analogy to work, like things have to be, you know, like.  A fire extinguisher, an object of a particular purpose announced in the very name, has a particular function:  it puts out fires.  Except under the most fantastical circumstances, it can never cause a fire.  Are y'all with me on this?  Good.

Knudsen's stupidity would have it that if a gun causes violence then another gun can stop that violence, like a fire extinguisher stops ... fire extinguishers?  Umm, no.  The purpose of a gun is clear.  Firearms kill.  I don't find that disputable on any level.  Knudsen's logic, the real kind and not his stupid version, is that students, staff, faculty having guns will 'extinguish' others using the same tool.  That's not a terrible bad argument until you accept that if no guns are allowed on campus, then fires won't start except at the rarest of instance when an extinguisher is need.  He makes, himself,  the very best argument for not allowing firearms on campus. 

This Will End Well

There's a thoroughly enjoyable article in the Missoulian today concerning the atlatl and atlatl hunting.  I suggest that all give it a read.

Smiles and frivolity aside, however, I have a concern here that no one seems to want to address just yet.  No, it isn't that Hinkle's SB 112 is a frivolous waste of the legislature's valuable time.  A great deal of verbiage has already been spent on that score.  My complaint isn't that this bill would only favor the rare hobbyist like Atlatl Bob.  No, my concern is born of a healthy respect for weapons of any kind, and hunting as the killing endeavor that it is.

Sometime about 15 years ago (?), the state of Montana decided that bow hunters needed to attend and pass a bow hunter's safety course before getting a license to hunt.  Yes, I'm quite well aware that bow hunters who had previously had such a license (and could prove it) were grandfathered in.  Unless legally prohibited, any Montana resident above the age of 18 can get a rifle license.  But you have to pass bow's hunter's safety to get your bow license, regardless of hunting experience or experience shooting a bow.  The reasons stated were these.  A bow and arrow, though not as lethal as a rifle at distance, are more difficult to aim and shoot making bow hunting a greater hazard for other hunters.  An arrow, quite physically, does not have the killing capacity of a bullet, which ups the number of wounded and wasted prey animals.  Bow hunting has a private season and thus requires different training, camouflage and the like.  Yeah, I know that last one is kinda silly.  I thought so too at the time.

If one wants to train with a bow, there's plenty of places to do it.   There are archery ranges, stump shooting in National Forests.  Hell, if you have appropriate safety and your squeamish neighbors don't complain, you can probably do it in your back yard.  Atlatls are a different beasty.  They require more room at the point of launch, and they are a much harder weapon to get even an approximation of accuracy with.  That whole "know your target and beyond" thingy goes right out the window with a weapon one is just learning to use.  (For the record, yes, I've used an atlatl.  I wasn't teh awful, but accuracy takes a lot of practice.  I got pretty good at hurling a stick 50 yards with no discernible point of target.  These things require training for the safety of oneself and anyone downrange.) 

Hinkle's bill would allow anyone, novice or otherwise, to buy a rifle license and pick up a spear, dart or sharpened stick.  And you, my hunting friends, get to share the woods with these armed individuals.  The saving grace is that one can only hunt with a spear/dart during rifle season, so they have to wear orange, just like the rest of us.  Most bow hunters I know give up the bow during rifle season, because by the time they've crept within range of the game, some dude or dudette with a .308 has already planted the animal.  Atlatl hunting during rifle season would be at best useless, (unless you're hunting in your own private back 40, and why the hell do we need a law for that?).  At worst, it would be dangerous to those sharing the woods around our modern Neanderthals.

So I really want to know when the state will mandate atlatl hunter's safety ...

Hardly Surprising

This is the story, from the AP as filed by Matt Gouras, which was top center in the fish-wrap copy of the Bozeman Chronicle today.  You won't find it on the front of the Chronicle website, but rather only in State News.  It details how the Montana House of Representatives Judiciary Committee sent HB 516 on to a full floor vote.  If any are unfamiliar, that would be the bill that would strike down any anti-discrimination ordinance that deviates from the statewide version.  It's passage would be a victory for the Montana Talibangelicals. 

I'm not bringing this up solely because this a blow to universal human rights, which it is.  Jamee Greer and others make that point far better than I.   No, I bring this up because not once in the article does it mention the city of Bozeman.  "So what?"  you might ask.  Allow me to respond.  There's two reason's actually.  The first is that the Bozeman city commission has a city wide policy statement of anti-discrimination similar to Missoula's ordinance.  That too would be struck down by HB 516.   One would think it significant to mention that in the home town Bozeman newspaper.

Second, look at the headline:  Montana GOP targets Missoula Gay Rights Ordinance.  Accepted that Matt Gouras may not be the writer of the headline, there is still something chilling and instructive about it, and the actions taken by the Montana Republican representatives.  Though the bill's text speaks clearly of 'protecting classes' of people, this is all about teh GEY, and how they must not be "protected".  In other words, this is a direct attack against the rights of GBLT people, the very rights the rest of us enjoy as being protected in one manner or another.  Simply put, they are not worthy of protection.  It's also rather pointed that this is aimed at Missoula, and only at Missoula.  Bozeman's fair policies are only collateral damage to the hippy punching of putting Missoula in it's 'proper place'.  And this coming from the same bunch of folks who bristle at the fact that the Federal Government can tell them what to do.  I invite you to consider the bitter irony of that on your own.

I recently had a terrific conversation with an individual in the know who stated something that I've recognized for some time.  Bozeman is not well liked in Montana.  We are seen as 'snooty'.  But having grown up in the Bitterroot (almost spelled it Bitterrot ... wouldn't that be pointed) I recognize that whatever disdain is directed at Bozeman pails in comparison to the bile reserved for Missoula.  It does not speak well of us as a state when our GBLT friends and family are used as disposable pawns in games of civic rivalry.

(Crossposted at LitW)