Jan Brewer, Arizona governor and Glendale Community College’s most famous radiologic technologist certificate recipient, is actually The Worst. I know I’ve said that about a lot of people — Paul Ryan, Rick Scott, Scott Walker, Walker, Texas Ranger — but Brewer has gone above and beyond to show America again and again that she’s truly a terrible human being. Her most recent bit of virtuoso assholery? A New York Times Magazine interview wherein she defends her push to allow more Arizonans to carry concealed weapons that ran — awkwardly — on the same morning a gunman opened fire on civilians outside of the Empire State Building and the morning after 19 people were shot in Chicago, 13 of them within a single half hour.
The Andrew Goldman interview is noteworthy for its ballsiness. He asks the Arizona governor about her tacky, shouty confrontation with Barak Obama on an airport tarmac last year, her nakedly racist immigration policy, and her son’s incarceration for sexually assaulting a woman in the 1980’s (Brewer’s son is institutionalized, and during her governorship, she’s advocated to preserve state spending on mental health care facilities, but to cut state funding for organizations that assist rape victims). But the real meat of the profile is here —
You have been strongly against gun regulation. In light of the Gabrielle Giffords shooting outside Tucson and massacres in Colorado and Wisconsin, have you revised your position?
Not in regards to regulation. Those things would have happened whether guns were regulated or not. These madmen are going to find some way, somehow to create whatever it is they want to create.You signed a law that entitles people to carry concealed guns in bars as long as they don’t drink. I wouldn’t trust myself in a bar with access to a gun.
I think a bartender knows who’s drinking and who isn’t.But a bartender wouldn’t know who’s carrying a concealed weapon.
Ninety-nine point nine percent of the people that are gun owners are very responsible.
Wow, what an asshole. To follow that line of reasoning, we should probably get rid of the driver’s license requirement, speed limits, and center lines on roads because 99.9% of drivers are responsible about what side they’re supposed to drive on and when they should pass. Let’s also get rid of prescription requirements for addictive drugs like Xanax and Valium, because 99.9% of people who use them do so responsibly.
I’m sure that thought — that only 0.1% of gun owners are irresponsible fire-into-a-crowd types — is incredibly comforting to the victims of the Aurora shooting, or the Empire State Building shooting, or the families of people who died when that guy shot Gabrielle Giffords. It also must be comforting for the hundreds of families in Chicago — in mostly poor, Black, Mexican, or Puerto Rican neighborhoods — who are currently dealing loss or permanent injury of a loved one thanks to gun violence.
In Jan Brewer’s defense, she had no way of knowing that the Times piece would run on the same day as a mass shooting. But I’m sure she’s not bothered by it. After all, if everyone around the Empire State Building had concealed guns, they too could have fired into the crowd in pursuit of the random assailant, thus preventing more gun violence. See how that works?
[NYT]
via Jezebel http://jezebel.com/5937624/jan-brewer-is-proud-that-999-of-gun-owners-dont-shoot-people
