I Dream Awake

Fall Impression 2, originally uploaded by GypsyRock.

Fitting with all that snow out my window…

on the way, originally uploaded by jovivebo.

Can’t go wrong with stained glass.

Shocking isn’t it? With no substantial right to self-defense and a near total ban on personal ownership and use of guns by private citizens gun crimes haves skyrocketed. I wonder why…

We have, post-Dunblane, what are said to be the toughest gun control laws in the world. They have actually proved strikingly ineffectual.

Gun crime has doubled since they were introduced. Young hoodlums are able to acquire handguns - either replica weapons that have been converted, or imports from eastern Europe - with ease. With no dedicated frontier police, our borders remain hopelessly porous. The only people currently incommoded by the firearms laws are legitimate holders of shotgun licences, who are subjected to the most onerous police checks.

Even more disturbing is the insouciance with which guns are used. An 18-year-old Angolan refugee was sentenced to life this week for shooting dead a woman holding a baby at a christening party, in what was otherwise a “routine” robbery.

Maybe if violent criminals had a bit more reason to fear for their own safety when attacking someone they might be just a smidge less likely to commit a crime in the first place… Nah. That’s crazy talk…

Looks like someone is positioning themselves for VP, or maybe the 2012 election:

Well … I’ve removed knives from the heart, treated on more occasions than I’d like gun shot wounds to the chest, but I have NEVER seen a patient shot in the head with an arrow (Apparently there was a tribal dispute over some land. Until today. (It’s a long way from the floor of the U.S. Senate.)

At least he isn’t campaigning to be the nation’s mother…

The pitch from a lead Hillary fundraiser:

“Hillary Clinton is the right candidate,” Ziman explains. “The nation is in deep need for a mother figure who will lead the people out of a violent world and back into caring for the poor and the disabled, mostly caring for our children, our future.”

Oh please, no… The last thing this nation needs is more micromanagement of every tiny bit of our daily lives in pursuit of some communitarian moralist crusade for “our own good”.

My new desktop, thanks to a combination of the Royale Noir theme for XP, Rocket Dock, and a previously posted sketch from Souvlaki Spacestation. The taskbar autohides, natch.