Warning – News rant

I’ve already ranted this week on my personal Facebook account, so forgive me if some of you have heard this before. But I figured why let a good rant go to waste when I’ve got blog space to fill LOL.

The first phase of my rant centers around some comments by the president’s press secretary this week.

Using words like “tragic”  and “ironic”, he bemoans the fact that Americans have exercised their Constitutionally protected civil rights in recent weeks. Yes Really. 

In what upside-down world would someone – from the pulpit of the White House no less – berate and denigrate citizens who are exercising their right to vote, or their right to worship, or their right to trial by jury? Oh that’s right, when one is talking about guns, all bets are off. It is perfectly okay to berate, denigrate, restrict, stereotype, scold, and slander firearms owners — because somehow the Second Amendment is a dirty second-class Amendment which not only must sit at the back of the civil rights bus, but which some wish to kick off the bus entirely.

To compound his already insulting remarks, the press secretary then when on to demonstrate his ignorance of existing federal firearms law. He mentions that he thinks that Black Friday firearms sales were so high because people were buying gifts FOR friends and loved ones. 

The press secretary has apparently never heard the words “Straw Purchase”. He is apparently appallingly ignorant of the fact that purchasing a firearm and going through the NICS system with the intent of supplying said firearm to someone else is Illegal. Even a purchase as a “gift” is skating over the thin ice of illegality.  http://www.wsj.com/articles/supreme-court-upholds-federal-ban-on-straw-purchases-of-guns-1402932979

There just isn’t a facepalm big enough for ignorance like this – especially coming from someone in a position of national “authority”, who is ostensibly speaking “for” the president about matters involving the civil rights of millions of Americans.

Then, to make matters worse, this report appeared in my newsfeed.

In this little gem, the actual Director of the actual FBI demonstrates that he has no idea how federal law governs internet sales of firearms. He apparently thinks that it just gets shipped to your home. Here is a high ranking official in federal law enforcement, who has no freaking clue about federal law requiring a firearm to be shipped to an FFL dealer, who must then fill out federal paperwork, and run a federal NICS before you can take that firearm home. 

The press secretary’s ignorance is bad enough, but this guy is IN law enforcement. This guy presumably carries a firearm as a federal law enforcement officer. In fact, he can carry in places that I cannot. Yet it is me, the mere citizen and lowly pediatrician who knows and follow the law, of which this FBI Director is astonishingly ignorant.

Things like this make me very, very cranky.

I need to go do something happy instead – like roll shotgun shells in glitter for my Christmas tree 🙂