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You are here: Home / Gun Issues / Gun nuts / Late Night Open Thread: When Narwhal Tusks Are Outlawed…

Late Night Open Thread: When Narwhal Tusks Are Outlawed…

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… Actually, as far as I can tell from a cursory google search, because the narwhal is a protected species, only pre-1972 narwhal tusks are legal in the U.S. (The one spontaneously repurposed in London was a pub ornament, date of its collection unspecified.) And given the legal ones are hella pricey, there’d probably be fewer stories like this…


I’m not fond of unannounced drop-ins either, but jeez.

Reader Interactions

69Comments

  1. 1.

    Roger Moore

    A 65-year-old Maine man who outfitted his home with a device designed to fire a handgun at anyone opening the front door unintentionally shot and killed himself on Thanksgiving night.

    Or he managed to commit suicide in a way that convinced his insurance company that it was accidental.  Either way, one more argument for not giving stupid people guns.

  2. 2.

    Obvious Russian Troll

    Poor, dumb bastard was a little old for a Darwin award.

     

    That’s the best I can say about him.

  3. 3.

    Gin & Tonic

    I’m sorry, but without further detail I’m going to dispute the “unintentionally” part of the Tweet. It sounds to me like the device functioned exactly as intended.

  4. 4.

    Steve in the ATL

    I was taught as a 1L that spring guns were illegal everywhere except Texas.  I’ll bet that’s changed in the [frighteningly large number redacted] years since I was a 1L as the right wing nut jobs have proliferated.

    Regardless, you can’t prosecute a dead man!

  6. 6.

    Eunicecycle

    I am somewhat embarrassed to admit that I thought narwhals were mythical creatures until about 20 years ago.

  9. 9.

    Marcopolo

    Reposting this from the burnt out dead end of the thread below (now I get to see if cutting and pasting works with links and whatnot–edit it did not ):

    So apparently if you have a website using the .org registry you should be concerned about what happened last week:

    Internet world despairs as non-profit .org sold for $$$$ to private equity firm, price caps axed
    At the end of last week, the Internet Society (ISOC) announced that it has sold the rights to the .org registry for an undisclosed sum to a private equity company called Ethos Capital. The deal is set to complete in the first quarter of next year.
    The decision shocked the internet industry, not least because the .org registry has always been operated on a non-profit basis and has actively marketed itself as such. The suffix “org” on an internet address – and there are over 10 million of them – has become synonymous with non-profit organizations.
    However, overnight and without warning that situation changed when the registry was sold to a for-profit company. The organization that operates the .org registry, PIR – which stands for Public Interest Registry – has confirmed it will discard the non-profit status it has held since 2003 as a result of the sale.

    Also

    More recent decisions by ICANN also had a significant bearing on the decision to sell the .org registry. At the end of June this year, in a controversial decision made despite significant and vocal opposition, ICANN decided to lift price caps on .org domains for the next 10 years, paving the way for unlimited price increases on the 10 million .org domain names. That decision massively increased the value of the .org registry from millions to potentially billions of dollars.
    At the time, ICANN justified the decision by saying it was bringing the contract in line with the many new extensions that have been added to the internet in recent years. And this week, ICANN’s chairman Maarten Botterman told The Register in a statement that:
    “The renewal agreement for .org removed the price cap and includes pricing provisions that are consistent with the base form registry agreement that is published and has been in public view for some time, essentially removing the role of ICANN in pricing restraints, where possible.”

    Anyways if you or anyone you know has a presence on the .org registry the recommendation is to lock down the current registration price for the next decade in order to avoid expected large increases in prices.

  12. 12.

    laura

    @Marcopolo: Private Equity makes me feel very stabby.

    This rent seeking zero added value asset stripping larded up with debt on previously sound going concerns and tripping daisies with the profits and nary a backward glance at the smoking ruins and desolation where once was community makes me long for massively progressive confiscatory tax laws and a giant public sector to enforce it.

  15. 15.

    HumboldtBlue

    An actor who made her name on Parks and Recreation found herself in the midst of one of the most popular football teams on the planet, Liverpool FC.

     

    Alison Becker, who played the character Shawna Malwae-Tweep on that show also shares a name with the best goalkeeper in the world who happens to play for Liverpool FC, Alisson Becker.

     

    When she started getting enormous reactions on her Twitter when the footballing Becker was signed by Liverpool she was at first confused but soon made the most of it in hilarious fashion.

     

    Last night the footballing Allisson Becker was honored as the best goalkeeper in the world and actor Alison Becker had the perfect response.

  16. 16.

    Jay

    Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia – the fruits of his genius for statesmanship – and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milošević. While Henry continues to nibble nori rolls & remaki at A-list parties, Cambodia, the neutral nation he secretly and illegally bombed, invaded, undermined, and then threw to the dogs, is still trying to raise itself up on its one remaining leg.

    Anthony Bourdain, A Cooks Tour, 2001

  23. 23.

    Suzanne

    I’m so tired that my brain hurts.

     

    Anyway, I have a job interview in Cleveland and Pittsburgh this week. Wish me luck.

  24. 24.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    Open thread. Want to have your mind blown? The entire Law and Order franchise and the X-Files series take place in the same universe

  30. 30.

    Suzanne

    @Steve in the ATL: Thanks for the info. I’ve actually got all of my meals scheduled with the principals I’m interviewing with, so I don’t really get to pick. But, with some luck, I will get this job and be there considerably more often! I’d be stationed in the Pittsburgh office, but likely moving often between offices.

  31. 31.

    Comrade Colette Collaboratrice

    When the narwhal story first appeared in the Guardian, there was an obvious Russian bot in the comments section (“Phyllis,” and fuck them for desecrating my late grandma’s name) that kept repeating the same “UK needs 2nd Amendment, hurr durr” comment with slight, automated variations after every comment praising the ordinary people who fought the terrorist. The language was strikingly similar to that used by obvious male blow-up doll alleged human “Cliff” “Maloney” quoted by John above. Must be a coincidence.

  34. 34.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Jay: If my eyes roll out of my head due to the stupidest man on the Internet, does that qualify as closing them and going to sleep?

  38. 38.

    Roger Moore

    @Jay:

    At his core, I think Barr believes Republicans should be above the law.  It goes back to the thing about conservatives believing in people the law protects but doesn’t bind and those it binds but doesn’t protect.  He thinks the Republicans- or at least important Republicans- are in the protect but not bind group, and Democrats are obviously the opposite.

  44. 44.

    Mandalay

    @John Cole

    this is a better argument for giving everyone narwhal tusks than it is for making it easier for the terrorist to get an ar-15 like he could in the US

    Speaking of AR-15s…

    A 19-year-old Indiana woman — described by her pastor as a “bubbly young lady who had a bright future” — was fatally shot when a 22-year-old friend riding in the backseat of her car accidentally discharged an AR-15 style assault rifle, according to police.

    And then you click a linked article:

    A teenage boy in Florida is facing manslaughter charges after police say he accidentally shot and killed two friends … The two teens died from their injuries on scene, police said. Blanco was taken into custody and charged with manslaughter, according to police.

    And then you click another linked article:

    At least four people were shot in Wisconsin during the state’s opening weekend of deer hunting season, officials said.

    And then you click another linked article:

    A man shot his brother after mistaking him for an injured deer in a hunting accident in Michigan on Saturday.

    And then you click another linked article:

    In what officials are calling a bizarre incident, an Arkansas hunter was killed by a deer that he thought he had shot dead.

    And then you click another linked article:

    A hunter has been killed after one of his companions shot him while mistaking him for a deer in Georgia, according to authorities.

    And then you click another linked article:

    A New York man has been charged with second-degree manslaughter after he shot and killed a woman he says he mistook for a deer.

    This is all shit from the past few days. This country is fucking nuts.

  48. 48.

    Jay

    @Mandalay:

    don’t bother checking out “a well regulated militia” on twitter.

     

    keep in mind, these are only the stories that make either the news, or the police report sections of local papers.

     

    lots of people shoot/get shot and it doesn’t make the news.

  52. 52.

    Sally

    @HumboldtBlue: Rather than returning the money to these dreadful donors, I wish people would donate the funds to an appropriate charity. In this case perhaps Planned Parenthood. That would serve two useful purposes.

  54. 54.

    evodevo

    @Debbie(Aussie): Anyone around here in Ky knows not to show any flash of white during deer gun season…pulling out a handkerchief, Kleenex, or showing white sox, shirt, gloves will get you shot at in some places….not anything new…my husband has stories from his younger days about that…

  56. 56.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    also, you fucking moron

    What John said. What the Fucking Moron doesn’t get in his cult blinded head is weapons like the AR-15’s are specifically designed overwhelm resistance.

  57. 57.

    Anne Laurie

    @Amir Khalid: Hunting-goods stores in America sell camo-patterned underwear, and it’s not *just* as a novelty.

    Shortly after I moved to the Northeast (early 1990s) a woman in Maine was shot to death when she ran into the back yard of her new suburban home because she was wearing white mittens, which looked like a fleeing whitetail deer to the guy with the gun.  He wasn’t charged, because he’d been hunting in that area “for years” and it was “not his fault” that it was now a subdivision instead of a preserve.  Also, stupid flatlander should’ve known better than to wear white during hunting season…

    She rushed out because her small children were playing in their own back yard when she heard shots.  So they got to watch Mommy die, but it’s not like it was on purpose.  (IIRC, it was cited in the hunter’s favor that he hadn’t shot the kids, which would’ve been totally unprofessional, but that may just be my narrative imagination.)

  62. 62.

    Barbara

    @Roger Moore: He called the police himself but died at the hospital so probably not suicide. He had other similar contraptions, which required more police to make sure they weren’t endangered. Just paranoid.

  64. 64.

    Miss Bianca

    Maine: We put the “boob” in “booby trap”.

     

    I’ll have to ask my sisters (two Maine, one Cape Codder) if they’ve heard about that one!

  65. 65.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Obvious Russian Troll: 

    Poor, dumb bastard was a little old for a Darwin award.

    Fuck, always late to the smartass party…

    Here’s a nearly completely O/T story related to me by a CalTech undergrad nearly 50 years ago:

    There is (or was) a tradition at CalTech that one specific day a year any senior found on campus could be tied to a tree, & all underclassmen were permitted to break into (but not burglarize – all in good fun) the seniors’ rooms.

    One year a crowd gathered at one particular senior’s room there as he emerged with just enough time to leave campus. “Don’t even try it,” he warned them, “I have a loaded shotgun in there rigged to go off the next time that door is opened.”

    A very small undergrad was dragooned to shimmy through the heating ducts & have a look – & sure enough, he saw a shotgun pointed at the door with a tripwire tied to the trigger.

    No one could figure out how anyone could get past this, including the occupant. When he returned next morning he looked at the crowd gathered outside the room & laughed. “You mean you let that stop you? That gun is so old & decrepit it can’t possibly go off!” And he yanked the door open –

    Whereupon the gun discharged with a loud BOOM! & he fell backwards to the floor as the crowd screamed –

    And the senior picked himself up off the floor laughing like a loon. It was, of course, loaded with a blank.

    He also told me about another instance where a senior had rigged up a truly impenetrable locking system – & when he returned the next day could not find his room. After much fruitless effort to break in, the undergrads went to a nearby hardware store & returned to plaster & paint over his door.

    Urbane legends, no doubt, but fun.

  66. 66.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Eunicecycle: I am somewhat embarrassed to admit that I thought narwhals were mythical creatures until about 20 years ago.

    As long as you didn’t think narwhals were mythical but unicorns were real. Then you’d be a Bernista.

  67. 67.

    pacem appellant

    @HumboldtBlue: Alison Becker is my only celebrity crush. She is also lead voice actress on the comedy sci fi podcast Bubble. Check it out on you local pod catcher. Season 2 is due to drop soon.

  68. 68.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Mandalay:

    People ask me how I do it,

    And I say, There’s nothing to it –

    You just stand there looking cute,

    And when something moves, you shoot!

    So there’s ten stuffed heads in my trophy room right now:

    Two game wardens,

    Seven hunters,

    And a pure bred Guernsey cow!

    (“The Hunting Song,” Tom Lehrer, c. 1951)

  69. 69.

    seefleur

    @Miss Bianca: Google Karen Woods – we had recently moved to Maine (and the town where it happened) when this happened. The hunter who killed Karen was a Scout Master. My husband was also a Scoutmaster. We used that event to teach our sons hunting safety when they got to the age of wanting to hunt. It was a horrible time for that poor woman’s family. Even worse, there were a lot of assholes in Hermon (the town where it happened) who blamed the woman. I was so glad when we were finally able to get out of that town. It’s the same town that hung Stephen King’s dog – yes, that Stephen King.

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