Not to denigrate Ms. Anderson, but the U.S. military has lots of screwed up members thanks to the Bush-era policy to recruit anyone who walked through the door, including junkies, drunks, dropouts, mentally ill, criminals, etc. They even filled out the recruitment papers for them, and lowered the training standards!Yeah, a 19-year old who entered the Air Force at least two years into Obama's time in office, and it is Bush's fault!
Friday, September 13, 2013
It Is All Bush's Fault!
A very sad story about a 19-year old airman who committed suicide on Guam in 2011 using her service revolver. The parents are claiming the Air Force failed to do what they should have done. I have no opinion on Air Force responsiblity, just sorrow that it happened. But one of the comments captures progressive irrationality so well:
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My favorite example of this kind of irrationality came in the wake of the Kelo vs. City of New London Supreme Court decision. A vile prog on a company-internal mailing list commented on the decision with the crack "What else did you expect from George W. Bush's Supreme Court?" What was wrong with this? Let's count.
ReplyDelete1) The Kelo decision came down in 2005. At that time George W. Bush had nominated 0 justices to the court, so its composition had in no way been shaped by him.
2) Bush was on record as saying that when he had a chance to make such appointments he would look for justices in the mold of Scalia and Thomas. Those justices voted with the minority in Kelo, meaning that if Bush had had a chance to appoint justices to the court prior to the decision it might well have gone the other way.
3) More broadly, the justices who were considered 'conservative' (Scalia, Thomas, Rehnquist) voted with the minority and the ones who were considered 'liberal' (Souter, Breyer, Ginsberg, Stevens) voted with the majority. The ones considered 'moderates' split (O'Conner in the minority, Kennedy in the majority).
Of course, none of this mattered to the vile prog in question. He hated the decision, therefore it just had to be Bush's fault somehow, facts be damned. The best thing I can say about him is that after I pointed the above out to him on the mailing list he had the grace to slink away silently rather than come back for another round.
I guess an apology would have been too much to hope for. Being a vile prog means never having to own up to your mistakes, no matter how blatant.
Wait? Service revolver? I believe that would 9mm. The Air Force has not issued revolvers since the late 80s.
ReplyDeleteAside from the progressive commenter being completely full of fertilizer, if he/she/it really believes what it/she/he says, she/it/he ought to be tickled diaper-pink. Hiring people with those kind of disabilities is generally a progressive's idea of a jobs program...
ReplyDeleteAs far as the article: the Air Force hasn't used revolvers in a lonnnnngggg time. Maybe you could find one some place, but the semi-automatic M-9 Beretta has been the standard service sidearm since long before this airman was born.
I meant to add to my previous comment about the handgun: I wouldn't expect you (Clayton) to know the USAF doesn't use revolvers any more, but those layers of editors and fact checkers...
ReplyDeleteObviously, everything is Bush's fault. I thought that science was settled. Why is this even news?
ReplyDelete(For those who lean to the left, please note that the above was intended as sarcasm.)
I was wondering about the revolver too since the Beretta M9 is the standard side-arm. But I have also heard that old school S&W 38 revolvers are still available to military guard and law enforcement personal. In part because some women (and perhaps men) who have smaller hands find them easier to use.
ReplyDeleteWithout having all of the details as to what the AF did or did not do I won't speculate on wrongdoing.
However I do think there needs to be investigation and work on mental health screening and treatment by the service regardless of the facts of this story. There have been far too many events of late to believe otherwise.
I would not be surprised if revolvers were available to those with smaller hands. I like the Beretta M9, but it it is too big for hands to do that first double action trigger pull, and I would think that this is true for many female soldiers, too.
ReplyDeleteA friend's daughter recently was discharged from the Navy because of some mental health problems -- not severe, but they do not have to be severe to be a problem in a situation where lives are at stake. I don't know for sure if the Air Force screwed up on this or not. Almost everything involving diagnosis and treatment of mental illness is devilishly complex. Even people doing their best screw up.
I found the M-9 pretty big for my hands, and the decocker/double-action-on-the-first pull a big nuisance for a self-defense pistol. I can see that being a big problem for people with hands smaller than mine.
ReplyDeleteAnd pulling some .38s (with the 9-12 lb trigger pull) out of storage some place and handing them out to people with smaller hands is such a sufficiently stupid solution that I'll bet it is what the USAF did.
I mean, if you're going to have a second type of handgun in the mix, it's not like you can buy smaller semi-auto with the same capacity, same ammo, simpler manual of arms, and reliability of the M-9 off of some other service's (say the Army) contract.
Like other services, even more so, the Air Force is scared of guns, and so minimizes them as much as possible. What this unfortunate young woman did will simply reinforce that.
The "progressive" comment is also, as far as I understand it, wrong on the facts as well as the timing.
ReplyDeleteThe only kernel of truth in it is that a "dropout" who did pretty good on the ASVAB anyway could get in with permission, or people with exceedingly minor criminal records and subsequent good behavior.
The painted picture of terminal drunks, junkies, and criminals being swept up to be "cannon fodder" (as they always put it) is simply false.