Rolfe is a good example of how government workers easily morph from well-intentioned public servants into fascists who want to control every portion of your life.

Each and every time ‘Puter hears the words “alcohol, tobacco and firearms” strung together he thinks not of the much-maligned federal regulatory agency responsible for Fastly and Furiously walking guns to Mexican drug dealers. 

Rather, ‘Puter thinks of Julie Andrews in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music singing My Favorite Things.  Ah, musical theater.  Is there anything it can’t teach us?

Anyhoo, ‘Puter was perusing the morning news while dropping the kids off at the pool, and came across this hysterical report on voter identification laws being the second coming of Jim Crow. The quoted voter identification law opponents make two basic arguments: (1) ZOMG!!1! TEH WIMMINZ N MYNORITTEEZ(!!1!one!) R HERT! and (2) there are very, very few instances of voter fraud, so the law should be overturned.

The article’s second point is the one that got ‘Puter’s thinky parts twanging along.  So liberals now are going to argue that the correct standard for legal review of statutes is not whether Congress is constitutionally able to pass the law it did, but rather whether the validly enacted law affects a minimum, yet undefined, threshold of harm.  That’s an interesting standard.  ‘Puter’s intrigued.  Let’s apply the liberals’ chosen standard to alcohol, tobacco and firearms.

As you may know, liberals tend to hate guns with an irrational passion bordering on insanity.  If you need an example, look no further than E.J. Dionne, whom ‘Puter has depantsed on several occasions, including ‘Puter’s finest moment, in which ‘Puter’s protest required Mr. Dionne’s editors to force him to correct an article. Of course, Mr. Dionne being a zany, madcap, fact-challenged liberal modified his stance from a call to ban automatic weapons to a call to ban semi-automatic weapons, which is merely further proof of Mr. Dionne’s limited knowledge on the subject of firearms.

There are thousands of pages of federal regulations, not to mention federal statutes, dealing with firearms. ‘Puter didn’t even bother to look at state regulations and statutes, as liberals generally want to use federal power to cram down a “one size fits all scheme” on America.  Suffice it to say, firearms are well regulated in the United States.

So what’s the damage caused by firearms?  There were 31,347 firearms deaths in 2009 according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As ‘Puter has noted before, of those 31,347 firearms deaths, 18,745 were suicides, 11,493 were homicides, 554 were unintentional, 333 were either justified or war-related and 232 were undetermined.  In reality, gun control advocates’ primary argument for further regulation of firearms is that firearms are used in homicides.  So, we should only really consider the 11,493 firearms related homicides, and exclude all other causes. 

How does that stack up against other causes of death?  Well, let’s take a look at alcohol, another of ‘Puter’s favorite things.  In 2009, there were 10,839 alcohol related traffic deaths, which is more or less equal to the number of firearms homicides.  But there were also 15,183 deaths related to chronic liver disease and cirrhosis. So we’re up to 26,022 alcohol related deaths, 126% more than all firearms homicide deaths.  And yet alcohol is far more readily available than firearms.  Where’s the Left’s outcry to limit sale of alcohol’s “high capacity magazine” equivalents, such as the case of beer, the 1.75L handle of vodka, the cheap-assed Walmart box of chardonnay?

And what of tobacco?  Among alcohol, tobacco and firearms, tobacco is the undisputed King of Killing.  Here’s the CDC’s take:

More deaths are caused each year by tobacco use than by all deaths from human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), illegal drug use, alcohol use, motor vehicle injuries, suicides, and murders combined.

‘Puter also learned that the CDC claims one in five American deaths each year is tobacco related.  That’s around 444,000 deaths.  And yet we hear no call for bans of all tobacco products in the media.  Mr. Dionne’s not penning hair-on-fire-columns as Aunt Marjorie rattles out her last cancerous breath, or when Uncle Bill bursts into flame from smoking through his stoma while still hooked up to his oxygen tank.

Even ‘Puter’s limited math skills show you are 36.8 times more likely to be killed by tobacco and 2.2 times more likely to be killed from alcohol in a given year than you are to be killed by an intentional third party firearm discharge. Heck, you’re almost as likely to die from an intestinal infection in any given year as you are to be killed by a gun.

Using liberals’ own newly-discovered (“Thanks, living Constitution!”) standard, America’s judiciary should overturn all existing gun laws.  After all, the number of crimes linked to guns is vanishingly small, just like folks who vote illegally, stealing elections and electing Democrats in perpetuity, right?

Wrong.  You see, liberals in legal arguments don’t ever really mean what they say.  What liberals mean to say, but cannot, is that whatever legal standard gets to the result they desire is the correct legal standard.  If the same legal standard on different facts ends in an undesirable result, well, it’s simply time to wring another horseshit rationale out of the living Constitution.

‘Puter’s been banging on about guns for far too long, and, in reality, none of this brouhaha is about guns at all.  It is about liberals using the legal system to exert control over you and your life. Liberals have a religious faith in their ability to determine for you how your life should best be lived.  The difficulty liberals have is that we’re too stupid to know how brilliant their plans for us are, and we insist on making our own choices, choices involving guns, tobacco, soda, butter and Snooki.  So the liberals have to bring about their preferred Utopian world order by force, soft force if possible (e.g., abusing the legal system) or deadly force where required (e.g., Communism worldwide).

It’s not about guns.  It never was.  It’s always been about your freedom.  And the sooner you wise up to it, the sooner we can end this farce.

'Puter

Always right, unless he isn’t, the infallible Ghettoputer F. X. Gormogons claims to be an in-law of the Volgi, although no one really believes this.

’Puter carefully follows economic and financial trends, legal affairs, and serves as the Gormogons’ financial and legal advisor. He successfully defended us against a lawsuit from a liquor distributor worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid deliveries of bootleg shandies.

The Geep has an IQ so high it is untestable and attempts to measure it have resulted in dangerously unstable results as well as injuries to researchers. Coincidentally, he publishes intelligence tests as a side gig.

His sarcasm is so highly developed it borders on the psychic, and he is often able to insult a person even before meeting them. ’Puter enjoys hunting small game with 000 slugs and punt guns, correcting homilies in real time at Mass, and undermining unions. ’Puter likes to wear a hockey mask and carry an axe into public campgrounds, where he bursts into people’s tents and screams. As you might expect, he has been shot several times but remains completely undeterred.

He assures us that his obsessive fawning over news stories involving women teachers sleeping with young students is not Freudian in any way, although he admits something similar once happened to him. Uniquely, ’Puter is unable to speak, read, or write Russian, but he is able to sing it fluently.

Geep joined the order in the mid-1980s. He arrived at the Castle door with dozens of steamer trunks and an inarticulate hissing creature of astonishingly low intelligence he calls “Sleestak.” Ghettoputer appears to make his wishes known to Sleestak, although no one is sure whether this is the result of complex sign language, expert body posture reading, or simply beating Sleestak with a rubber mallet.

‘Puter suggests the Czar suck it.