The Kind-Hearted Smart Aleck

Is it just me or are smartphones too touchy? What I mean by that is, how often do you not remember pressing any button on the phone, yet find a way to have clicked on an application, gone online, or made a phone call without your knowledge? With my old phone (when I say old, I mean almost ancient), I could have left it in my pocket, dropped it several times, pressed a number of buttons, yet nothing would have happened. With my new smartphone, I'll check it every few days and see that I accidentally called someone I hadn't spoken to for many years while my phone rested in my pocket. Well, I thought it was resting. Apparently, it had other ideas. One of these days, my uber-touchy smartphone will likely get me into trouble. While watching a movie with my girlfriend at her place, I'll receive a strange call from an ex I hadn't spoken to for a couple years. She'll then leave a message which says, "So, I saw that you called yesterday and..." Yeah, that's g...

Christopher Stanlane - a 34-year old resident of Fairmont, North Carolina - accidentally shot and killed his 10-year old son while cleaning his shotgun on Sunday afternoon. The father was said to be cleaning his shotgun while on the couch and his son was in front of him watching television when the gun went off and struck the boy in his head, which killed him instantly. With the investigation ongoing, no charges have been filed to this point. I have so many questions for the father upon reading this story. First off, why in the world would he not check to make sure his gun wasn't loaded before cleaning it? Next, why wouldn't he make sure to point the gun away from anyone, regardless of whether or not it was loaded? Lastly, why would he not go about this in a different room than where his 10-year old son resided? This guy obviously didn't have proper training and at this point in his life, was much too careless and uneducated to be owning a firearm. This is one reason wh...

A week ago Saturday, in the run up to Martin Luther King Day and the second presidential inauguration of Barack Obama, guns rights advocates got together to celebrate Gun Appreciation Day. It's something King would have supported. Even though he was killed via a gun, he was as pro-gun as John Bobbitt was pro-knife. When I think of Martin Luther King, I think about a man who stood up for the rights of darkly toned weapons. So, what stood out about Gun Appreciation Day this year? At three different gun shows, five people were accidentally shot. Yeah, read that over again - on a day when gun rights activists made their voices heard by holding gun shows on a day known as Gun Appreciation Day in an attempt to depict most gun owners as responsible and to suggest that no additional gun control laws were needed, five people were accidentally shot at these very shows. The first time I read that, and even the thirty-third time I read that, I thought, "This can't be real. The Onion...