Today In Gun Fun Times: Eat Hot Lead With That Pumpkin Scone, And Other Dumb Gun News

Hello again, backbiting tone-policing finks of Wonkette! It has been a while since we looked in on the responsible gun owners of America and all the ways the more vociferous of them can be giant dicks about their right to stockpile weapons and ammo like they’re goddamn Mack Bolan or something, always ready to leap into a commando mission against KGB paramilitary units at a moment’s notice, because wingnuts live on whatever mescaline-rich planet Jim DeMint currently inhabits. Anyway, let’s look at some news.

Chris Christie, still smarting from the beating he took from the GOP base last year after he gave the president a tug job in exchange for Obama leaving some Hurricane Sandy aid money on the dresser, decided to get on the wingnuts’ good side by rejecting three gun-control bills the New Jersey legislature had sent to his desk. The first one, which Governor Meatballs fully rejected, was a ban on the future sale of .50 caliber rifles (anyone who already owns one would have to register it within a year). Christie called these guns necessary for “recreational pastimes.” Which is true, if your recreational pastimes include shooting down helicopters or hunting the herds of wild elephants known to roam the Pine Barrens. Never mind that Christie himself called for the ban back in April. Things have changed since then, namely that time has continued moving forward and the 2016 presidential primaries are a little closer.

Christie gave the other two bills conditional vetoes, so the legislature could still rewrite them and send them back. Among other provisions, these bills would have required instant background checks for private firearms sales, prospective gun owners to take a safety course, state officials to report data about any guns lost, stolen or used in a crime to federal databases (only the NRA is allowed to have a national database of gun owners), and digitally embedded gun permits in the holder’s driver’s license. We’re sure the tinfoil hat brigade would love that last one. Anyway, Governor Profile in Courage announced these vetoes after 6 P.M. on a Friday in August, probably because New Jersey already has strong gun control laws and two-thirds of its residents “put a higher priority on gun control than on maintaining an individual’s right to own a firearm” and Christie wanted to ensure himself a nice weekend down at the Shore without his constituents pelting him with ice cream cones and the rotting corpses of seagulls.

Do you live in Huntsville, Texas? Allow us to extend our sympathies, and to warn you to be on the lookout for this man, Pastor Terry Holcomb. The good pastor, rector in fine standing with the Church of the Perpetually Peevish, has been wandering around Huntsville with an AR-15 strapped across his back. This is not because he is looking to help the hopeless like the hero in a shitty syndicated TV series from the early 1990s. Holcomb is upset because the state of Texas has a concealed carry law for handguns, but not open carry. So if you want to go out strapped with your gat, yo, you gots to keep it under wraps. Whereas if you have a permit you can gallivant around with an assault rifle at the ready in case Pancho Villa chooses that day to rise from the dead and lead an army of zombies and crazed Mexican narcos to take Texas back.

Holcomb has taken along a cameraman on these little jaunts, to film him shopping in Wal-Mart (where employees forced him to leave because they hate Freedom, probably), buying a coffee at Starbucks (we’ll get to the subject of Starbucks and guns in a minute), and standing on an overpass cheerfully waving to alarmed motorists who, understandably, kept calling the police to report an idiot armed with a goddamn semi-automatic assault rifle playing in traffic. As the cops explain to Pastor Holcomb, people are calling because they don’t understand the law. Left unasked is the question: if people don’t know the law, is there any damn point to alarming them like this?

Finally, because we know you cappuccino-sippin’ libtards love your daily dose of Organic Fair Trade Gluten-Free Diet Beans-Not-Picked-By-Slave-Labor-We-Swear Starbucks coffee, we thought we’d mention this story from a couple of weeks back. Starbucks has long had a policy of complying with local and state gun laws (full disclosure: your Wonkette held down a job as a Starbucks barista for nearly two years during his undergraduate years in Boston. One Charles represent!). In other words, if your state allows open carry and you are wearing your sidearm when you enter a store, Starbucks is totally cool with that and will not demand you leave. So earlier this month Second Amendment supporters held a nationwide Starbucks Appreciation Day. Grande nonfat double skim lead lattes for everybody!

But one store did not want to celebrate. This would be the Starbucks in Newtown, Connecticut, for understandable reasons. On that day, this Starbucks shut down a few hours early. Because gun fetishists are often indecent assholes who can’t shut the hell up for five minutes about their right to always be armed, a crowd of them gathered in the store’s parking lot anyway to piss and moan and call a nearby crowd of anti-gun folks “ignorant.” Because God forbid a major corporation, which 364 and a half days out of the year shows a deference to the Second Amendment folks that many other companies do not, should allow one store out of thousands to show respect for another point of view.

Well that was fun as always and not infuriating at all! Let’s close out by revisiting yesterday’s nice time. That should wash the stench off quite nicely.

[ The Nation / Raw Story / NY Times ]