Bent Corner

The smell of wine and cheap perfume.

Maryland

Jarrod Ramos kills five at Annapolis newspaper

A lone gunman, Jarrod Ramos, 38, of Laurel, Maryland entered the Capital Gazette newspaper in Annapolis armed with a shotgun and killed five people. Two other people were injured in the attack.

Ramos has evidently has had a long-standing grudge against the newspaper. In July of 2011, the paper mentioned Ramos by name in an article about a criminal harassment case against him. He tried to sue the paper in 2012 and being the loser that he is, lost the lawsuit. The two individuals named in his lawsuit no longer work for the newspaper and they were not present yesterday during the shooting.

The victims include:

  • Gerald Fischman, columnist
  • Rob Hiaasen, editor
  • John McNamara, sports reporter
  • Rebecca Smith, sales assistant
  • Wendi Winters, reporter

We don’t have a gun problem, we have an asshole problem

Jarrod Ramos, 38, of Laurel, Maryland.

A lot of people will be quick to say this was caused by the easy access to guns we have in this country. They say we should ban all guns. I don’t think we should do that. We don’t have a gun problem, we have an asshole problem. Take Ramos’ shotgun out the equation, he still wanted to murder five people he did not know, five people who had done him no harm. Three old men and three women.

Every mass shooting in this country has involved an asshole with a gun. Recent estimates say we have over 245 million guns in this country. Considering that number, if guns were the problem, mass shootings would be a much greater problem. We would experience multiple mass shootings each and every day.

Jarrod Ramos is a homicidal asshole

Until we have a way of removing homicidal assholes from society before they commit murder, I wish the government would make it easier for law-abiding citizens to arm themselves. My greatest fear is that I will end up in a gunfight without a gun. When I die, I don’t want it to be hiding under a desk. First of all, I don’t think I’d fit under a desk. Secondly, I don’t want to die as a helpless victim. If I have to die, I would at least like to know I went down fighting.

Currently, it’s very difficult to get a wear and carry license in Maryland. The most difficult hurdle is you have to demonstrate a valid reason to have such a license.  Not wanting to die unarmed in a gunfight is not a valid reason.

If more law abiding citizens were armed, it might detur assholes like Jarrod Ramos from walking into a building and murdering people.

Ted Nugent compares half the country to ‘rabid coyotes’ who should be shot

Rock musician and accused draft dodger Ted Nugent thinks a lot of Americans are like rabid coyotes who should be shot on contact.

From CNN:

Nugent, a musician and National Rifle Association board member, made the remarks during a seemingly casual — yet fiery — interview with InfoWars host Alex Jones. During the interview, Jones — a right-wing conspiracy theorist — said he wanted to know why liberals hate America and “love communism.”

“Don’t ask why,” Nugent said. “Just know that evil, dishonesty and scam artists have always been around and that right now they’re liberal, they’re Democrat, they’re RINOs, they’re Hollywood, they’re fake news, they’re media, they’re academia, and they’re half of our government, at least.”

“So come to that realization,” he continued. “There are rabid coyotes running around, you don’t wait till you see one to go get your gun, keep your gun handy. And every time you see one, shoot one.”

The National Rifle Association. People place this logo on their vehicles so thieves know who’s house to rob if and when they want a gun.

I guess now we know why Ted Nugent is a National Rifle Association (NRA) board member. He clearly has a lot going on upstairs and is a living example of someone who is fully embracing the Second Amendment lifestyle.

To me, Ted Nugent sounds even crazier than Joss Whedon. To me, Ted Nugent is an example of someone who should not have access to firearms.

It’s times like this I feel sorry for the sane and intelligent people on the other side of the gun debate who feel strongly that as an American, they have a Constitutional right to own a firearm for their own protection. NRA board member Ted Nugent do people like this a real disservice.

My opinion on guns is fairly simple: in a perfect world, nobody would have access to a gun. We would live in a country free of guns. The problem is, we don’t live in a perfect world. We have more guns in this country than we have people.

This problem has been a long time in the making. Gun manufacturers have churned out guns by the millions for decades. We couldn’t ban guns even if we wanted to. There are simply too many already in circulation. Because of that, I think everyone should be able to arm themselves for their own protection.

If the law allowed it, I’d carry one of these everywhere I went.

Under normal circumstances, I don’t need a gun to protect myself, unless the person wishing to do me harm has a gun. By law here in the state of Maryland, I’m not allowed to carry a gun for my protection. Here in Maryland, if someone with a firearm wishes to visit violence upon me, I must wait for the proper law enforcement authorities to come to my defense. I’d rather not be subjected to a system like that, but what can I do about it, move up to Pennsylvania where carry laws are a lot more relaxed?

I think I’d rather be shot in the face with a bullet dipped in full-blown AIDS than live in Pennsylvania. I think I speak for a lot of Marylanders when I say that.

Today is the first day of Spring, but the snow is falling

According to The Fantasy Art of Frazetta calendar, I bought on clearance a month after New Year’s Day, today is the first day of Spring. With that said, it’s been snowing pretty good here in Hagerstown most of the day. And it’s not supposed to stop until tomorrow.

The warlocks and witches that work at the National Weather Service say we might get eleven inches of white death. They put the odds at 1 in 10. Odds?

Do people bet on the weather?

Even though I’m not very healthy right now, I went out and shoveled off the driveway earlier. I just pushed the snow off to the side. It seemed like only an inch or two of snow.

I’m one of those weirdos who like snow. I like the cold and I like snow. I like watching it fall and I even like driving in it. I’m not into skiing or snowboarding. I tried skiing only once and didn’t care for it. The actual skiing was fun, the not being able to stop when I wanted to part was not fun.

I have been blocked by Steve Shives

I’ve joined thousands of other Twitter users and I’ve been blocked by Steve Shives. Who’s Steve Shives? He’s a guy who lives in nearby Sharpsburg, Maryland and maintains a YouTube channel dedicated to social justice, feminism, and atheism.

He’s pretty famous for blocking people on Twitter. Evidently, he has a bot that blocks people based on who else they follow on Twitter.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, block bots are evil, dumb, and I hate them.

Steve Shives

Back before Steve was on YouTube, I considered him an e-friend. We both lived here in the Hagerstown area, we both had blogs, and we both shared a dislike for our local newspaper, The Herald-Mail. We were also very similar in our political views until we weren’t.

I was a fan of Steve’s writing on his blog, Steve Likes to Curse. It was a daily read for me. Although the site is still up, he no longer writes blog posts. That’s too bad. I think he is a good writer. He probably writes scripts for YouTube, but listening to someone’s videos is not the same as reading someone’s written words. And to be honest, I don’t like Steve’s videos.

Here’s a recent video of his:

Steve Shives is such a polarizing figure on YouTube that he is often the subject of other YouTube creators. A good many YouTubers make videos about Steve Shives and the things he says. Some of them are quite funny.

I started having problems with Steve and his opinions even before he left LiveJournal for YouTube. Mostly it had to do with his inconsistency of atheism. Even though he gave the impression he was an atheist, when he and his wife married, they married in a local church. I know this because I saw the photos in The Herald-Mail. What kind of atheist gets married in a church?

That threw up a red flag for me.

And then there was Steve’s defense of the so-called Ground Zero Mosque. Atheist Steve was a vocal defender of building it. What kind of atheist supports building religious structures for any religious group? Here are some of the posts he wrote about the topic seven years ago:

If you can get through the above posts about the Ground Zero Mosque, give the following post a read and look at the inconsistencies. In it, Atheist Steve writes about a local church, the Emmanuel Baptist church spending an estimated $7 million on a new sanctuary and classrooms for a fundamentalist Christian private school.

I also found the title of the above post to be a little silly. How can you call any Christian church misogynist when there’s such a thing as Islam? Islam is the apex predator of misogyny. It’s not even close.

How can an atheist defend an Islamic group building a religious center, but criticize a Christian church for building a new sanctuary and new classrooms? Shouldn’t atheists be consistent in standing up against all religious groups?

And that’s when the wheels fell off for me with Steve Shives. He was a pro-Islam, anti-Christian atheist who when it came time to marry the love of his life, got married in a Christian church.

In comparison, when my wife and I got married nearly twenty years ago, we got married in the courthouse, like the honest, consistent atheists that we are.