Pun Salad

Barack Obama used to claim, absurdly, that it was easier for a kid to buy a “Glock than get his hands on a computer, or even a book.” Contemporary liberals have updated this talking point with more recent legislative obsessions.

“Activists have pointed out that in Georgia, for instance, it’s easier to buy a gun than to register to vote,” one reporter noted, without a hint of journalistic skepticism, yesterday. “This says a lot about where America is headed in 2021.”

“In a majority of states, new voters are able to obtain a rifle quicker than they’re able to cast their first ballot,” argued California’s Senator Padilla. “It seems to me we have our priorities entirely backwards when it comes to this — when we make it easier to buy a gun than we do to cast a ballot.”

These are not only category errors, they are highly misleading. Then again, even if they weren’t, this wouldn’t be as jarring an assertion as many people imagine. First, a citizen’s ability to exercise his Second Amendment rights should require as few impediments as voting — if not fewer. And second, despite the fantastical assertion of many Democrats, voting is already extraordinarily easy — it takes minutes to register and you can do it online — whereas buying a “Glock” in places such as New York, Maryland, California, or Washington D.C., is rendered prohibitively difficult as part of a deliberate effort to dissuade and, indeed, suppress law-abiding Americans from using their rights.

New Hampshire has among the highest rates of gun ownership in the country– the second-highest number of guns per capita according to one survey.

It’s also a relatively easy place to buy and own guns. While seven states have bans on so-called “assault weapons” — including nearby Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New York — New Hampshire is the only New England state in the top 25 rankings for gun rights. Guns and Ammo ranks the Granite State number 17 on their Best States for Gun Owners list, ahead of Alabama, South Carolina, and Florida.

The one area where New Hampshire lags when it comes to guns? Crime.

In five of the nine years between 2010-2019, New Hampshire had the lowest murder rate in the nation. (The 2020 numbers haven’t been released.)  According to U.S. News & World Report, in 2020 New Hampshire had the second-lowest rates of property crimes and violent crime in the country, trailing only Maine.

If you have ever had a conversation with a Democrat friend about election fraud, you know how it goes:

Caitlyn Moonbeam-D’Vegan: “There isn’t any election fraud.”

Scrooge McJudgy: “Of course there is. A Philadelphia judge of elections just went to jail for rigging an election in exchange for a bribe of $300, which isn’t very much money, even in Philadelphia.”

Caitlyn Moonbeam-D’Vegan: “I never said there wasn’t any election fraud.”

Scrooge McJudgy: “. . .”

Caitlyn Moonbeam-D’Vegan: “But it isn’t widespread.”

Scrooge McJudgy: “Well, it fits the most common definition of ‘widespread,’ inasmuch as it has happened in a lot of elections in a lot of different jurisdictions. We’ve had convictions from Maine to Hawaii — more than 1,000 of them, in fact. And that’s just the ones that result in criminal convictions. So, I think ‘widespread’ is fair.”

Caitlyn Moonbeam-D’Vegan: “I never said it wasn’t widespread.”

Scrooge McJudgy: “. . .”

Caitlyn Moonbeam-D’Vegan: “But it hasn’t actually changed the results of any elections.”

Scrooge McJudgy: “I assume that those Philadelphia Democrats were bribing the judge of elections to stuff ballot boxes because they wanted to change outcomes, rather than simply inflate their margins. And we’ve seen cases where fraud has unquestionably changed outcomes. We’ve seen elections thrown out by courts because of fraud. Al Franken probably won his first Senate election on the strength of illicit votes.”

Caitlyn Moonbeam-D’Vegan: “I never said it hasn’t changed the results of any elections.”

Scrooge McJudgy: “. . .”

Caitlyn Moonbeam-D’Vegan: “It hasn’t changed the results of a presidential race.”

Scrooge McJudgy: “Probably not. Maybe in 1960, but, probably not. Still, wouldn’t you feel better if there were more reliable oversight in place?”

Caitlyn Moonbeam-D’Vegan: “Sedition! Sedition! Sedition!”

The refrain is all too familiar: Widening income inequality is a fatal flaw in capitalism and an “existential” threat to democracy. From 1967 to 2017, income inequality in the U.S. spiked 21.4%, and everyone from U.S. senators to the pope says it’s an urgent problem. Yet the data upon which claims about income inequality are based are profoundly flawed.

We have shown on these pages that Census Bureau income data fail to count two-thirds of all government transfer payments—including Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps and some 100 other government transfer payments—as income to the recipients. Furthermore, census data fail to count taxes paid as income lost to the taxpayer. When official government data are used to correct these deficiencies—when income is defined the way people actually define it—“income inequality” is reduced dramatically.