Friday, December 24, 2010

It's too easy

But I can't pass it up anyway:

Palm Beach County plans to lift ban on guns in parks.

This is run of the mill stuff to be sure, and God above knows I don't need to clue any of my readers in to the fact that Paul Helmke is a flaming asshole, but I am easily amused and it's 2 AM so I'll run with it.

Local officials, not the state, should decide whether it's safe to allow guns in local parks, said Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence — a gun-control group based in Washington, D.C.

The Palm Beach County parks rule change is an example of how more conservative state governments across the country refuse to allow local communities to have stricter gun rules, Helmke said, adding that concealed weapons don't belong at sports fields and other public recreation areas.

"More guns mean more gun violence, sometimes intentional or sometimes accidental," he said.

There is no part of his statement that is not objectively false.  I won't outline it; y'all know it already.  But I will say that this part is especially atrocious: "(t)he Palm Beach County parks rule change is an example of how more conservative state governments across the country refuse to allow local communities to have stricter gun rules".  Yeah.  That horrible law to which Helmke refers is between 20 & 30 years old.  It cannot possibly be an example of a current political trend, as he's implying.

Crap like this is exactly why BobS has a "lies of the antis" category.

Again, we all know that they're full of it, but can't they at least exert themselves enough to not be shown as liars in the very same article?  Of course, the forked tongue isn't limited to Helmke here; there's plenty of stupid to go around:

"We weren't aware," Helfant said about the state law. "When it came to our attention we had to amend our own ordinance."

The NRA doesn't buy that explanation.

The NRA through the years has alerted Palm Beach County and other local governments across the state that they their attempts to prohibit firearms didn't follow state and federal law, said Hammer, the former president of the NRA.

Oh, bless their hearts.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Like I said, let's play a fun game of word substitution:

"The Palm Beach County parks rule change is an example of how more classically liberal state governments across the country refuse to allow local communities to have stricter race-mingling rules, Helmke said, adding that African-Americans don't belong at sports fields and other public recreation areas."