You can limit access to guns, but crazies will still find a way.

As horrified travelers watched, a Greyhound Canada bus passenger repeatedly stabbed and then decapitated the young man sitting beside him, who was sleeping with his head leaning against the window, a witness said Thursday.

While not all the details of this horrific knife wielding incident are yet available, I would rather be shot than be stabbed and decapitated.

This sort of tale reinforces my viewpoint that society should be investing resources in mental health improvements instead of implementing bans on various weapons. In Canada, Mr. Crazy McStab doesn’t have access to a pistol but needs him some killing. So he gets a big butcher knife, sits quietly on the bus for a while and then chops up the guy next to him. Maybe it was planned. Maybe he knew the guy and wanted revenge. Who knows?

The point is this - if you really, really want to kill someone horrifically you will find a way. If you want to kill a large group of people, you will find a way. There are, in fact, thousands of ways to kill a large group of people with readily available means that are not projectile based. They can all be researched on the Internet or found elsewhere. Think of the guy in China who poisoned 30-plus of his competitor’s customers.

That’s why we should be focused on what makes people mentally ill in the first place instead of on the inanimate tools these people use to go on rampages when their sicknesses take control of them. No one in Canada is calling for a knife ban but some idiot will. And it won’t fix anything.

Georgia resident Andisheh Nouraee writes about what it is like to exercise his freedom to carry a weapon for self-defense in the great metropolitan melting pot of the South - Atlanta. The article is worth reading and the pictures are inspiring - in particular because Nouraee is of Middle Eastern extraction.

If you intend to rob me, stab me or punch me in the neck because you think I looked at you funny, I recommend you glance at my waist before lifting the pull tab on that can of whoop-ass.

I may be carrying a handgun.

Nearly everyone in our state can legally keep guns in their home. I am one of the few, the proud, the Georgia Firearms Licensed – one of a reported 300,000 Georgians permitted to carry a gun in public.

I am also one of Georgia’s 300,000 gun carry license holders. I don’t really worry too much when I don’t have my gun with me (which is rare). I do find it extremely useful when I bike, run or travel by automobile. It’s reassuring to be packing heat when I’m practicing for a triathlon on the rural roads around where I live and a pack of wild dogs decides they need to chase me and nip at my heels - I haven’t yet had to fire a shot but it certainly reassures me to know that if I feel teeth sinking into my calf I don’t have to try and hop off and beat the mutt into submission while his pack mates chomp down on other extremities or worse yet, my throat. If you’ve never experienced the pack mentality, I suggest you watch some video of a pack of dogs attacking a human being. Not pretty.

Humans in packs are even worse than dogs. Enough said about that.

People have many reasons for self-defensive weapons carry. Most people only need to be mugged once to realize that police provide an illusion of safety but not much else - they generally won’t be there to stop whatever bad thing happens to you while it’s happening.

I got my gun license a year and a half ago after I was relieved of my wallet at gunpoint at my front door by a man who threatened to come back for me if I cancelled my ATM and credit cards.

Since he was clearly comfortable dropping by the house unannounced, police told me to take the threat seriously by carrying a gun myself.

I’ve had handguns for target shooting since I was a kid, but never carried one for self-defense. After the robbery, I applied for a permit so I could carry a gun without breaking the law. And even before the license arrived, I started to carry my gun from my driveway to my front door, which is legal; I was scared the guy would keep his promise and come back for me.

Amazing! Police told Mr. Nouraee to get a gun! That’s wonderful. Let’s move on to the meat of the story.

Nearly everyone I spend time with regularly has a visceral and fearful reaction to guns. Having so many gun-dreading friends and acquaintances has taught me to keep guns where no one will ever see them. Carrying a gun in public seemed like peeing in the sink of a public restroom. Not illegal, but definitely a first-degree jerk move.

I was also afraid of the reaction of strangers. I would hate to be the subject of this 911 call: “Hello, police, I’m at the Publix on North Decatur Road and there’s a swarthy bald man here with a gun. He’s headed for the Lean Cuisine.”

So, although I had a permit, I was less than thrilled that the General Assembly passed H.B. 89 in April. The new law would give licensed firearms permit holders the right to legally carry guns into places that used to be off-limits: city and state parks, public transportation, and restaurants that serve alcohol.

We Americans are allowing ourselves to be conditioned to just this mindset. Guns are bad, MMMKAY? If a dude has a gun and he isn’t in uniform he must be planning something nefarious, MMMKAY?

The truth about guns is that they are merely an extension of the mindset of the person who has control of the trigger. I have never understood why we cannot focus on changing the mindset and instead insist that the gun itself is the problem. But our bureaucrat class feels threatened anytime control is taken away from their clerks and myrmidons. Which is how we arrive at these sort of stupid press conferences.

Mayor Shirley Franklin and airport General Manager Ben DeCosta held a press conference at Hartsfield-Jackson to publicize their intention to keep the airport a gun-free zone. They were joined by the media and a half-dozen members of the gun rights group GeorgiaCarry.org, there to protest the city’s position.

Bearden and his gun never showed up at the airport, though. But later that day, he did file a lawsuit against the city for banning guns from the airport. A hearing is scheduled next month.

The city argues the airport and its parking lots are municipal buildings, and therefore not subject to the law’s public transit provision. In their speeches, both Franklin and DeCosta emphasized the 9/11 attacks as reason to keep guns out of the airport. The city’s found a powerful ally in U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., who’s demanding that the Transportation Security Administration ban guns from all parts of major airports.

“I keep hearing the phrase ‘in this post-9/11 society’ and I’m so sick of that,” said Mark McCullough, a GeorgiaCarry.org member who was at the press conference. “What 9/11 showed me was that the government has no ability to protect me. I don’t want to be walking around the parking lot here with [my cell phone] being the only device protecting me.”

While I was at the airport, GeorgiaCarry.org treasurer Michael Menkus invited me to a party. To celebrate their newly granted right to carry guns in restaurants that serve alcohol, members of the group planned to meet at Christos, a Greek-style pizzeria in Marietta, to eat dinner with handguns strapped to their waists.

I hope you’ll take the few minutes out of your life to read the rest of the story. I hope this because I hope to one day live in a place where guns are not the problem. I hope to live in a society that values rational discussion enough to realize that it is what lives in your mind that is important. A society that values individualism and self-determination will inevitably also value the life of the individual and allow individuals to defend themselves from aggressors. Societies that ban guns just end up with lots of stabbings. They also tend to end up with lots of people who cannot think for themselves in life threatening situations.

Reports today indicate that John McCain has finally injected some negativity into the Presidential race, despite his much ballyhooed rhetoric about positive, dignified campaigning. The reason for this is simple. John McCain has finally figured out he doesn’t have a chance in hell of being President.

The old happy warrior side of Mr. McCain has been eclipsed a bit lately by a much more aggressive, and more negative, Mr. McCain who hammers Mr. Obama repeatedly on policy differences, experience and trustworthiness.

By doing so, Mr. McCain is clearly trying to sow doubts about his younger opponent, and bring him down a peg or two. But some Republicans worry that by going negative so early, and initiating so many of the attacks himself rather than leaving them to others, Mr. McCain risks coming across as angry or partisan in a way that could turn off some independents who have been attracted by his calls for respectful campaigning.

The drumbeat of attacks could also undermine his argument that he will champion a new brand of politics.

“The McCain campaign, I think, is being pulled in two directions,” said Todd Harris, a Republican strategist who worked for Mr. McCain in 2000. “On the one hand, this race is largely a referendum on Obama, and whether or not he’s going to pass the leadership threshold in the eyes of voters. So being aggressive against Obama on questions of leadership and trust and risk are important, but at the same time I think they need to be very careful because McCain is not at his best when he is being overly partisan and negative.”

Let’s be honest with each other, shall we? John McCain doesn’t represent hope for the parasite masses of helpless, hopeless Americans who need someone to manage their otherwise out of control lives. America is totally ready for a President who will promise us a big-screen TV in every living room. America needs a man at the helm who believes everyone is entitled to be equally mediocre. This nation believes in taking money away from producers and giving it to non-producers with very few strings attached. This nation believes that thick books filled with rules are more important than common sense. This union of states is perfectly comfortable with the idea of zero tolerance. Our huddled masses are focused on fake boobs and reality TV these days. That is why this nation wants and needs the cult of Barack Obama. That is why Barack Obama will be the next President of the United States of America.

That our next President will be a tall, black good-looking, cigarette smoking socialist specializing in speeches filled with powerful but ultimately empty rhetoric backed up by graft based on force of arms is as inevitable as the fall of Rome.

If I wanted to be President and I knew I was doomed to lose because of ignorance I had helped perpetuate during my career, I’d probably be negative too.

Some stories absolutely disgust me. This story about a mentally ill woman who refused to come out of the bathroom for two years and became physically stuck to a toilet because of sores on her body is one of them.

Babcock’s plight became known in February when McFarren called the Ness County sheriff, expressing concern about his live-in girlfriend. When authorities arrived, they found Babcock physically stuck to the toilet.

McFarren told police Babcock had refused to come out of the bathroom for two years. Medical personnel estimated she’d been sitting on the toilet for at least a month and said the seat had adhered to sores on her body.

She is now under the protection of a guardian who was appointed through the legal department at the hospital where she received treatment.

Six months on probation as a punishment for not alerting authorities to someone’s mental illness. I’m not sure how I feel about that. It is possible that this woman will receive appropriate care from the bureaucrats now in charge of her life. It’s also possible she’ll be abused, molested and generally thrown away and forgotten by society.

I don’t know what Pam Babcock’s mentall illness is, or her long term prognosis. I hope that she has a hope for recovery and the semblance of a normal life, but I’m dubious. If someone has reached the point where they are stuck to a toilet by the pus oozing from sores on their body, they are very ill indeed.

If people choose to live like animals, I don’t know that it is my responsibility to force them to live as a ward of the state instead. The boyfirend, Kory McFarren, doesn’t sound like a prize catch. However, he wasn’t physically hurting this woman. The story mentions no physical abuse. What was he charged with that resulted in six months probation?

If someone wants to sit on a toilet until they die why should the state intervene? Someone explain it to me. Why do we spend so much time and effort trying to protect people from themselves?

The Wall Street Journal complains that Barack Obama is economically ignorant. I completely agree.

What if I told you that a prominent global political figure in recent months has proposed: abrogating key features of his government’s contracts with energy companies; unilaterally renegotiating his country’s international economic treaties; dramatically raising marginal tax rates on the “rich” to levels not seen in his country in three decades (which would make them among the highest in the world); and changing his country’s social insurance system into explicit welfare by severing the link between taxes and benefits?

AP

The first name that came to mind would probably not be Barack Obama, possibly our nation’s next president. Yet despite his obvious general intelligence, and uplifting and motivational eloquence, Sen. Obama reveals this startling economic illiteracy in his policy proposals and economic pronouncements. From the property rights and rule of (contract) law foundations of a successful market economy to the specifics of tax, spending, energy, regulatory and trade policy, if the proposals espoused by candidate Obama ever became law, the American economy would suffer a serious setback.

Here’s a question though - how does Obama differ from George W. Bush? Not much. Bush is economically ignorant too. And we’re already in a recession. Sure, it would get much worse under Obama, but that might be a good thing. Americans need a wake up call.

We aren’t going to learn economics in school, so maybe we need to learn by the hungry belly method. Maybe we need to make government theft so blatant and so oppressive that all those with any talent flee the country.

I think we’re too far down the road to lowest common denominator economics to turn around without some bloodshed and human suffering. I hope I’m wrong but I doubt it. For now, we continue the redistribution programs and the rule books filled with arbitrary stupidity grow thicker and more onerous.

If you disagree with me, I invite you to write me and explain, as succinctly as possible, how you think Mr. Obama is going to fix the nation of obesity, instant gratification and ADD teenagers addicted to porn on the Internets by giving away more free stuff to people who aren’t really starving in the first place. How is the King of Redistribution going to make me any smarter, or more ethical or more productive? Unless he can do that times about 150 million people, he’s worthless before his sycophants have even elected him.