Pun Salad

⁷ The wicked are overthrown and are no more,
    but the house of the righteous stands firm.

This all-is-well spirit lives on in the position of White House Press Secretary. Sarah Huckabee Sanders should open every press briefing by reading Proverbs 12:7.

Do all lottery winners wind up broke? Despite the popular myth, studies that purport to prove that winning the lottery ruins your life aren’t convincing, often relying on small or distorted samples. Some people do suffer after hitting the jackpot: more than a few people have been gruesomely murdered for their money, others have succumbed to drugs or suicide, and some just go bankrupt after making unwise investments or spending too lavishly on themselves, family, and friends.

Nicole argues for allowing big winners to keep their identities from being disclosed, lest they be endlessly importuned (or, as she notes, murdered). She refers to the recent New Hampshire case where a $560 million winner successfully remained anonymous.

For the record: I despise state lotteries as a tax on the stupid. Don't they have enough problems?

But the fact of the matter is that new laws passed by state legislatures or the congress will only affect law-abiding citizens. Banning “assault weapons” or limiting magazine size won’t stop criminals from getting them.

The Heller decision made it clear that the only weapons that the government could ban are those that are “unusual or dangerous.” Despite several lower courts flouting this standard, the AR-15 is by no means unusual or dangerous. It’s a very good rifle for self-defense situations because of its versatility (you can make all sorts of ergonomic adjustments to the rifle very easily, along with mounting things like flashlights and lasers for targeting) as well as the number of rounds it can carry.

Any gun control law that puts the law-abiding at a disadvantage to the criminals they may have to face is a bad one. Limiting me to a 10-round magazine because some nut shot up a school with a 60-round drum magazine and a home invader is likely to have a 30-round magazine is morally wrong.

The gun-grabbers seem to be infected with a weird kind of animism, attributing a sort of evil, demonic essence to guns. This, I suppose, is easier for some to accept than simply attributing evil to the evildoers.

It also makes it easier to come up with facile "common sense solutions".

Guys. The NFL ban on kneeling is absolutely awful and I hate it. It is anti free speech.
It is also 100% in line with the "showing you the door" attitude on free speech you've been pushing the last several years.
Please think hard about that. pic.twitter.com/M8tr47xTnK

— PoliMath (@politicalmath) May 24, 2018

Wow, has it really been four years since the xkcd guy, Randall Munroe, posted that stupid cartoon? Wonder if he's reconsidered yet?

Pun Salad comments on the cartoon: here and here.