gun violence

The McCain Blame

On Thursday Senator John McCain blamed President Obama for creating ISIS and having a hand in the attack in Orlando. I guess he forgot about that entire episode where President Bush invaded the wrong country, destabilizing it and creating a world class recruitment center and haven for terrorists. It must have slipped his mind.

After accusing the president of treason and coming off as ridiculous as Donald Trump, McCain attempted to clarify his statement. He said his intention was to blame Obama’s policies, not as if Obama was personally cutting off journalists’ heads in the desert outside Raqqa.

McCain is in a tough primary race for his senate seat in Arizona. Now may not be the best time for him to make stupid statements. To retain his seat he needs to distance himself as far as possible from Donald Trump, not mimic him. What’s McCain’s next move, a photo op with a taco bowl while accusing himself of not being a war hero?

Before McCain picked a running mate in his failed presidential attempt in 2008, nobody outside Alaska has ever heard of Sarah Palin. Since that time we’ve suffered eight years of a tidal wave of stupidity that even Donald Trump has had trouble duplicating. Thanks, Senator. It’s the stupid that keeps on giving.

Speaking of stupid, Sarah Palin also had some criticism of President Obama this week. She probably does that every week but this one was noticeable. She said the president is a “special kind of stupid” over his efforts toward gun control. Seriously. Miss Right Winger Bitter Clinger has called someone else stupid. Next, her daughter will start lecturing about abstinence.

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Is That An Alligator In Your Pocket?

I know. Go ahead and give it to me. This is very insensitive and has poor timing. I’m not good with sensitive or sacred cows…or in this case, reptiles. At least I didn’t go with my first heartless idea which consisted of an alligator eating Mickey Mouse. Pissing off the NRA, Trump, and Republicans I’m good with. Disney on the other hand….ugh.

If there was a huge money-making alligator industry and rednecks used them to overcompensate for their tiny penises, there would be a trade organization buying off congressmen to make sure anyone could buy an alligator at any time.

Right now the Democrats in the U.S. Senate are conducting a filibuster to force the Republicans to schedule a vote on gun control. This has totally stopped all Senate business….which means it’s pretty much like any day in the Senate.

Republicans HATE to talk about gun control. The only issue they hate talking about more is Donald Trump. If you really wanna flummox a GOP office holder, ask him about Trump’s revolving position on guns.

Creative note: I’ve had a theme with alligators the past few days. Last week I drew Donald Trump with alligator arms (played that off a Geico commercial). Today I drew a commissioned cartoon with crocodiles for a brand new client that’s based outside the United States (Claytoonz is going international. You’ll see it Friday). Now today I drew this. I can’t help it. I like reptiles.

I really like reptiles. I once worked in the reptile house of a small zoo in northeast Louisiana in the late 1980’s. My favorite story from that brief adventure comes from the day we cleaned the alligator pool. I didn’t do any actual cleaning but it was my job to keep the gators and Alligator Snapping Turtles away from the cleaners. I was armed only with a stick. There were five gators in the tank. They were all under six feet long except for this one mother. Before we could drain the pool we had to get one gator out which we did with a lasso. That took several hours. Some genius designed the pool where the drain was in the deep end and had to be manually unplugged. Nobody likes diving with alligators.

The alligators cooperated for the most part. The turtles, not so much. In fact, the turtles concerned me a lot more than the gators.

A large chunk of my childhood was spent in Louisiana. When I was a kid my older sister and I swam in a bayou with them. As a teenager my buddies and I swam in the same water. We never had an issue. When I was around ten or eleven we actually had two pet baby alligators, which was and still is illegal. I didn’t know that at the time and thankfully, the statute of limitations has long passed. We only had them for about a week. They weren’t as cuddly as we thought they might be. I got bit a lot. They never bit my sister once.

I do feel really bad for the parents who lost a child this week in Orlando to an alligator attack. That city had one tragic week. Losing a child under any circumstance is a horrible thing to live with. I know. It’s something I’ve been very close to. I’m sure Disney will never make this family wait in line for Pirates Of The Caribbean ever again.

A lot of people are asking questions about the parents, just like when that Cincinnati gorilla thing happened. Thing is, things happen. This is a freak occurrence that’s a true tragedy. I don’t think there are any safety measures that can prevent something like this happening once in a million years, especially after you build tourist resorts on a swamp.

Before posting this I searched for hashtags and one of them is “Disney Gator” which sounds a lot happier than it really is.

Moment Of Silence

I don’t really believe there’s a man in the sky who controls everything and all is predetermined. I don’t have faith. But when someone says “God bless you” or says they’ll pray for me, I appreciate the sentiment. I don’t really expect them to work.

Prayers don’t work but it’s nice if you believe they do. If God has his mind made up then what’s a prayer going to do? Change his mind? He’ll decide against that typhoon wiping out Fiji? I know there are people out there who will swear they prayed for something and it totally worked, like they prayed and now their herpes only shows up once a month. It’s a miracle!

Praying is often used to give the impression that you’re doing something, when you’re actually not doing anything. It’s a favorite of our do-nothing Congress. Congress hasn’t done a damn thing about anything over the past six years, and they’ve especially ignored the issue of gun control.

Congress won’t even fund studying gun control, or the impact of guns on society. I’m surprised they watch the news to know when there’s another mass shooting, thus informing them it’s time to pray again. They’re content taking money from the NRA to ignore the sales of AR-15s. They forget we’re paying them too. Quite frankly, anyone attempting to purchase an AR-15 or AK-47 should be deemed too unstable to purchase a gun.

They’re really good at scapegoating and dehumanizing homosexuals and then praying for them after a gay nightclub is shot up.

Hey, Congress. Thanks for nothing.

Are you curious on my take of Trump’s statements on the shootings? Come back tomorrow. I have something to say about it.

Obama’s Tears

I have more faith in a person who sheds tears over children killed by guns than for those who will mock him for it.

No-Fly Can Still Buy

Republicans and the NRA think it’s perfectly fine to sell guns to people on the No-Fly List. Sure, someone may be a suspected terrorist but let’s not infringe upon their 2nd Amendment rights.

Their defense is that there are flaws with the No-Fly List and people are often put on it by mistake. What’s the first warning sign to get on that list, grow a beard? I think not being allowed on a flight would upset me more than not being able to buy a gun, but that’s just me. Apparently it hasn’t occurred to the gun huggers that maybe we should tighten up the process that puts people on the No-Fly List? I mean, if they think we can tighten up the vetting process for Visas and Refugees then surely we can do something about the No-Fly List.

I thought about doing something on this subject at the end of last week but by that point I had done enough cartoons on guns. I wanted other subjects. Rahm Emanuel, Antonin Scalia, and of course, Donald Trump helped me out there.

Pray For This Deranged Cartoon

The Republicans have been screaming about “Radical Islamic Terrorism” for a long time now. Meanwhile, they ignore greater threats. Yes. Greater threats, like Climate Change or non-Muslim Americans killing other Americans.

They were real slow in responding to a white guy shooting up a Planned Parenthood clinic. Why? Several reasons but the main ones being, they are waging a Smear campaign against Planned Parenthood, the shooter is white, the shooter is a Christian, and mostly because the shooter shares a lot of their core values.

They almost tripped over each other to respond to the shooting in San Bernardino. That’s because the shooter is Muslim and he’s brown.

The Colorado shooting by a white, Christian, Fundamentalist occurred on a Wednesday. The GOP candidates waited until Saturday to make statements. It’s been one day since the California shooting by a brown Muslim and the candidates have spoken. Let’s compare.

Ted Cruz on Colorado: Praying for the loved ones of those killed, those injured & first responders who bravely got the situation under control in Colorado Springs. He also referred to the shooter as a “transgender liberal activist.”

Ted Cruz on California: “all of us are deeply concerned that this is yet another manifestation of terrorism, radical Islamic terrorism here at home.”

Mike Huckabee on Colorado: “It was mass murder,” he said. “It was absolutely unfathomable, and there’s no excuse for killing other people whether it’s happening inside the Planned Parent headquarters, inside their clinics where many millions of babies die or whether it’s people attacking Planned Parenthood.”

Mike Huckabee on California: “There were always two “common denominators” for mass murders in the country: “One: A mentally unstable person. Two: A gun-free zone. And those seem to be the common denominators.”

Carly Fiornia on Colorado: “Any protesters should always be peaceful, whether it’s Black Lives Matter or pro-life protesters. What I would say to anyone who tries to link this terrible tragedy to anyone who opposes abortion or opposes the sale of body parts is, this is typical left-wing tactics,”

Carly Fiornia on California: “If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck and sounds like a duck, maybe it’s a duck.”

John Kasich on Colorado: Senseless violence has brought tragedy to Colorado Springs. I pray for the families in mourning and have hope our nation can heal

John Kasich on California: “There can be no doubt that this is an effort to destroy our very way of life.”

Ben Carson on Colorado: “Unfortunately, there’s a lot of extremism coming from all areas. ”

Ben Carson on California: “Look at all the things that are going on around the world. ISIS and groups like this. Just hatred and evil.”

Marco Rubio on Colorado: “we’re focusing too much on what it is people are using to commit violence, and not enough on why it is that people are committing violence.”

Marco Rubio on California: “We must not separate the threat to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv from the threat to Paris or London or New York or Miami.”

Donald Trump on Colorado: “I will tell you, there is a tremendous group of people that think it’s terrible, all of the videos that they’ve seen with some of these people from Planned Parenthood talking about it like you’re selling parts to a car.”

Donald Trump on California: “Radical Islamic terrorism. Take a look. I mean, you look at the names.” He then went on to criticize Obama for not using the term “radical Islamic terrorism.”

Chris Christie on Colorado: I can’t find anything but he probably offered a prayer. He did have a tiff earlier this year over Colorado’s pot law. Maybe he felt a comment would be awkward.

Chris Christie on California: “We need to come to grips with the idea that we are in the midst of the next world war.” He also said it was the “first” terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11. I guess he doesn’t consider any gun violence terrorism and didn’t read a newspaper the week of the Boston Marathon bombing.

Jeb Bush on Colorado: “There is no acceptable explanation for this violence,and I will continue to pray for those who have been impacted.”

Jeb Bush on California: Praying for the victims, their families & the San Bernardino first responders in the wake of this tragic shooting.

The Republican main brand is fair and this is another opportunity for them to sell that. Toward a solution, all the candidates have are prayers and a rush to hate Muslims. Neither is helpful or a solution to Americans shooting Americans. The New York Daily News is catching a lot of heat for illustrating as much on their front page. But praying while adding nothing else doesn’t change anything. Go ahead and pray for people. Despite some conservatives acting wounded over the prayer criticism, it’s not enough. Isn’t it just like conservatives to play victims over praying being criticized after 14 people were just killed?

How about in ADDITION to prayers (I said “in addition” you overly sensitive cry babies), proposing some solutions? How about actual legislation other than another bill to defund Obamacare?

Focusing on prayers and Islam isn’t stopping gun violence. Remaining silent over one shooting and taking a political advantage over another isn’t helping either.

The solution is fewer guns. Fewer guns for you. Fewer guns for me. And most importantly, fewer guns for bad guns. Seriously, it’s all empty rhetoric if you aren’t helping to keep guns away from terrorists, whether they’re domestic, foreign, Christian, or Islamic.

House Speaker Paul Ryan is against not selling guns to people on no-fly lists. We don’t have a problem leaving a douchenozzle stranded in Wichita but we better not violate his civil rights by making him wait on purchasing a gun. This guy is the leader of Congressional Republicans. We’re in trouble. It’s also weird how Republican concerns over Constitutional rights are absent over issues such as hmmm…I don’t know….voting?

There are too many guns. That’s the foundation to this problem. Obama is doing a terrible job of rounding up all our guns before the U.N. invasion. I swear I’m not voting for that guy again.

California Shooting

Practice makes perfect. Too many horrible events, too close together, keeps giving me not just the opportunities, but the requirement that I draw cartoons featuring guns. I am not the most talented artist among my editorial cartooning colleagues. Far from it. But I am getting really good at drawing guns.

I’m not against the 2nd Amendment. But the article was written when the top of the line firearm was a musket. It also says the right to a “well regulated militia.” What the Hell is well regulated about the proliferation of guns in this country?

I grew up with guns. I was (mostly) raised in Louisiana where you don’t drive past a pickup truck or a high school parking lot without seeing gun racks. I’m actually a pretty good shot. I strongly believe in the rights to own a gun and the culture of hunting. I believe hunting is very important to the environment in some situations. Of course, none of this requires the ownership of an Ak-47 or AR-15.

I owned guns. I tried hunting. I shot a rabbit once and then I felt really bad. The day I sat in a deer stand and watched three deer walk past me and I didn’t take a shot was the day I realized I wasn’t a hunter. I don’t like getting up early or sitting in a tree in the woods during winter. I’m not a fisherman either.

Over time I got rid of my guns. Not out of anything political. I was bored and I was neglecting them. They were getting rusty. After my son was born I was glad they were already gone. I gave them up the same way I gave up golf. I lost all interest. I would rather have a 335 than a 357. A 335 is a guitar. Do you know how many times I’ve needed a gun since 1988? None. I have needed a guitar on thousands of occasions and if someone breaks in I’ll wack ’em with a Telecaster (and don’t forget Killer digging the sleep hole in my bed).

The distribution of guns in the United States is getting beyond ridiculous. It’s stupid. It’s time we actually enact very strict laws on gun ownership. I believe every single gun should be registered. I’ll go farther than that. We need to register ammunition. We need further background checks. Why do we sell guns to people we won’t allow on a plane?

Yes. Bad guys will continue to find ways to get guns. People continue to drive too fast but we don’t get rid of speed limits. Despite laws against it, people still commit murder.

I drew a cartoon on guns last week. I wasn’t that wild about it. I drew it before the shooting in Colorado Springs. After that the cartoon was shared like crazy on social media. USA Today ran it. I tried to take a breath and not draw a cartoon on gun violence. I’m having a harder time squeezing those in because people keep shooting people. Enough!

I wanted to draw Rahm Emanuel today. America won’t let me. Stop shooting each other.

The drawing in this cartoon isn’t entirely accurate. Nobody walks in while I’m drawing. I don’t really have an editor anymore. I have the occasional editor a few times a month for commissioned projects and I don’t even let them tell me what to do. My dog is a Beagle and the dog in the cartoon doesn’t look very much like Chubbs. He does hang out between my feet and under my chair while I draw (or he gets back on my bed where he’s continuing his dig a sleep hole project). I don’t have a drafting table anymore but I do draw on a board (I’ve had since I was 17) on a flat table. I have two laptops, one for coloring (and everything else) and the other for scanning because my scanner doesn’t like my good computer. There is an Epiphone 335 next to my table which I mess with while watching TV, which is on the wall across from my drawing spot. I do have a Nirvana poster of Cobain but I don’t have one of the Nevermind cover. And I am wearing pants with holes in the knees.

Since I don’t post selfies this is the most accurate you’re going to see of me until someone else takes my picture for whatever reason that may be.

Planned Background Checks

I’m not saying if you are against abortion that you’re too crazy to own a gun. There are a lot of rational people out there who think abortion is wrong. A lot of people live in a gray area, while being personally opposed to abortion they don’t believe it should be illegal.

I’m talking about the militant “pro life” people. The kind of person that would stand outside a clinic and scream “slut” and “murderer” at someone who is making the toughest decision of their life. The type of person who can’t talk about a shooting at a clinic without making a reference to murdered babies. These are terrible people who are not rational, can’t comprehend, and probably shouldn’t be allowed to own a squirt pistol. Don’t believe how just utterly horrible these people are? Go to Youtube and watch a few protests outside abortion clinics. If you have any sort of decency you won’t be able to finish watching. It’s very sickening.

It starts from the top up. Cheryl Sullenger “was” a terrorist. She’s a convicted felon. In 1998 she pleaded guilty to conspiring to blow up an abortion clinic. Today she’s the senior policy advisor for Kansas-based anti-abortion group Operation Rescue. While working for the group in 1999 she provided the court dates of physician George Tiller to Scott Roeder, who then assassinated Tiller.

Troy Newman is the head of Operation Rescue. Newman wrote in his book “that the United States government’s responsibility to “properly deal with the blood-guilty … rightly involves executing convicted murderers, including abortionists, for their crimes in order to expunge bloodguilt from the land and people.” The guy was deported from Australia for being, Australian authorities said, “a threat to good order.” Fortunately for him, this is America. We don’t have good order.

Newman has endorsed Ted Cruz. Cruz, meanwhile, says the suspected shooter of the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood is a “transgender leftist activist.”

Carly Fiorina, who helped spread the lies that PP was harvesting dead babies, wails that the left is now attacking the pro life movement over the shootings. The pro life people say we don’t know the shooter’s motives. Yeah, it’s real hard to figure out the motive of someone who walks into a Planned Parenthood clinic, start shooting the place and then tell two police officers afterward “no more body parts.” We’re still scratching our heads over his intentions.

The body parts thing he’s referring to are the videos made by a pro life group. The videos are deceptively edited to make it appear PP is harvesting babies and making money from it. The videos have been proven, exhaustively, to be false and chock full of lies. Still, pro life people claim they’re real. Republicans in Congress want hearings over it. Never mind that seven states have conducted investigations because of the videos and all seven have cleared PP.

In the four months following the release of the videos, there have been at least four suspected arsons of abortion clinics and at least five cases of vandalism. The FBI has also reported an increase in the number of attacks on reproductive health care facilities across the country since the videos were released. On top of all this, anti-choice groups name clinic workers on their websites. It works kinda like Sarah Palin’s cross hair map of Democrats.

Since 1995, there have been a total of 5,147 violent incidents recorded at US abortion clinics, not including 2015. They include 922 reported incidents of vandalism, 663 anthrax or bioterrorism threats, 354 stalking incidents and 204 reported death threats. And yet, Republicans don’t want to call these people terrorists.

That’s why these people can’t be trusted. They spread hateful rhetoric, call people who are in a lawful practice “murderers, and when violence increases they act confused and say they’re not complicit. They even have the gall to play victim. Meanwhile, conservatives rage that Al Sharpton, President Obama and Black Lives Matter is encouraging people to shoot cops. Go figure.

The mentally challenged should not be allowed to own weapons. The militant “pro life” people, I’m not sure they should even be let outside…or run for president.

Dangerous Syrians

Skippy’s Got A Gun

Obama promised to deliver executive orders to decrease gun violence. Guess what wasn’t in any of it? Taking away your guns.

Obama is not coming to take your guns. There’s been this narrative for seven years he’s coming for them, yet you still have your guns. If he’s coming for your guns, he better get busy because he’s running out of time. In fact, he hasn’t even talked about taking away guns.

Last Friday in Oregon protesters lined the streets to scream at Obama not to take their guns. OK. He’s not taking your guns.

Sometimes when it comes to criticizing Obama logic and facts is not applied.

At what point will you believe he’s not coming to take your guns? Will you still believe it when he’s out of office?

I don’t know if we’ll ever have gun control in this country. Here’s a fact: We will never round up guns. Right wingers say there are too many and they’re right. There are too many guns and they’re in the hands of the few. But we can’t round them up.

We do need strict regulation. Regulation gun lovers will hate. We need legislation that tracks every single gun sale. Every single one. No sales without background checks. No sales of ammunition without a background check. There should be a limit on amount of ammunition.

You should be required to possess a license to own a gun. You should have to renew your license. Yes, the second amendment gives you the right to own guns. It doesn’t say it can’t be regulated. It doesn’t say you shouldn’t be held unaccountable.

Will this regulation stop gun violence? Not immediately. But eventually it will decrease and the amount of illegal guns out there will rise to the surface, unfortunately through crime.

This country is insane for guns. We don’t make much sense when it comes to ownership. It doesn’t make much sense to have such a blind devotion to it. Personally, I think people who are nuts about guns are overcompensating. Personally, I don’t need a gun to feel like a man.

It’s time for us to adopt a culture that when it comes to guns, we start making sense.

I drew this cartoon very early Tuesday morning. I finished coloring it Tuesday night. The last thing I put into the cartoon was the father’s name. I toyed with making it a conservative cartoonist’s name, but I couldn’t decide which one, and then I decided not to. I figured some would think it was a shot across the bow when I was actually just trying to have fun. Plus, I couldn’t think of any that deserved the attention and it would go to his or her head.

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Update: Here’s the rough. I had a very hard time getting the angles the way I wanted.

And this was my view while drawing.

claytoonz

Nationally Syndicated Editorial Cartoonist