H/t valued commentor LAMH. From The Trace:
More than 47 years before last week’s shooting at a community college in Roseburg, Oregon, Senator Robert F. Kennedy passed through the town on a presidential campaign stop and spoke about the need for stricter gun control measures.
He appeared on the Douglas County Courthouse steps on May 27, 1968, before a crowd of about 1,500. Protesters who opposed Kennedy’s position on gun control carried signs instructing others to “protect your right to keep and bear arms.”…
.
.@POTUS is scheduled to visit #Roseburg on Friday. Gun advocates promise a protest. http://t.co/xUeQLFVlQ8
— KREM 2 NEWS (@KREM2) October 8, 2015
… Elected officials say they welcome the visit, despite having different political views than the president.
Gun rights groups have also been vocal, condemning his visit after Obama said he plans to keep gun control at the forefront of political discussions.
A Facebook page called “Defend Roseburg – Deny Barack Obama” outlines plans for a protest at 11 a.m. Friday in advance of the president’s expected early afternoon arrival. Over 7,000 people have clicked on “going” to the rally, including many who have indicated that they are coming from California and elsewhere.
Organizers emphasize that they want a peaceful protest and instruct those attending to not engage in theatrics or arguments that cast gun control opponents in a bad light…
“If you choose to carry a firearm that is your right. Be safe, be responsible. We suggest that you carry a handgun as opposed to a rifle, but again, you have the right to carry what you wish. Whatever you carry, keep it holstered/secure. Show the world that American gun owners are responsible patriots. Look out for each other.”
An official with the Douglas County Tea Party said that at least two separate protests are planned, and that the intention is to show support for county sheriff John Hanlin, who has spoken out against additional legislative restrictions on gun ownership…
I think a gun advocate already demonstrated his love of guns in Roseburg. https://t.co/2l1VyKSl4i
— Bob Schooley (@Rschooley) October 8, 2015
Second commandment, Second Amendment… Garry Wills, “Our Moloch”:
… The gun is not a mere tool, a bit of technology, a political issue, a point of debate. It is an object of reverence. Devotion to it precludes interruption with the sacrifices it entails. Like most gods, it does what it will, and cannot be questioned. Its acolytes think it is capable only of good things. It guarantees life and safety and freedom. It even guarantees law. Law grows from it. Then how can law question it?…
Yatsuno
I reserve the right to arm bears. Why should hunters have an unfair advantage anyway?
Matt McIrvin
Kennedy’s speech was on the day I was born. Not long before he was shot to death, not long after MLK was shot to death.
Robin G.
Defend Roseberg – Deny Barack Obama
I don’t like this at all.
benw
Too late.
trollhattan
I find it rich that these morons are all worried about the preznit “Takin’ our gunz!” (as if) and not instead wondering which other idiot “area mom” is allowing her mentally ill son acquire a dozen weapons despite not having a job.
And also, too, what are they so worried about in bucolic rural Oregon, other than their fellow rural Oregonians, that they have to arm themselves? Miscreants driving up from Redding on I-5?
Fester Addams
” Look out for each other.” Really.
Baud
They can protest all they want. We’re not going anywhere.
Belafon
@trollhattan: Whatever FOX or their AM station has told them to be afraid of, obviously.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Robin G.: This is giving me a very bad feeling. Charlie Pierce noted earlier this week:
The “on a lot of levels” sentence is the very troubling part, given the current comments out of Roseburg.
Amir Khalid
The post headline makes me think of some hidden temple: a loaded AR-15 sits on a velvet pillow, while a congregation of rednecks prostrate themselves on the floor in its honour.
WereBear
I never thought I would see negative self-awareness.
ruemara
An angry, evil god that demands sacrifices. Regularly, plenty and often. I would avoid them completely.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
I quoted Pierce who used a bad word that is found in Las Vegas, Macau and other places. Not often enough owned and operated by indigenous peoples. Here or there.
Calouste
Roseburg, Oregon. Apparently just the right size for an asylum.
Baud
@Amir Khalid:
Our ammo that art in heaven
Hollowed be thy point
dmsilev
@Amir Khalid: I’m pretty sure you’re describing a conference room inside NRA headquarters.
OT: Ryan says “thanks but no thanks” to the Speakership. Alan Keyes for Speaker! He’s rested, ready, and probably crazier than ever!
Iowa Old Lady
How will this go with Secret Service agents around? I can’t picture what’s supposed to happen here.
Frankensteinbeck
@WereBear:
It’s called ‘projection’, and a century of scientific tests shows that it’s easier to do it than to not do it.
Face
Because the optics of 100s of fucking nutjobs dressed in full cammo and open toting M-50s and AK-47s during a ceremony meant to remember and celebrate victims of gun violence certainly screams “responsible patriots”.
Belafon
@Baud:
Thy casing gold
Thy will be done
peach flavored shampoo
@Yatsuno: I thought it meant this instead.
Frankensteinbeck
@Belafon:
Baud 2016
Amen
debbie
Are these those angry, bitter Whites by chance?
dmsilev
@Iowa Old Lady: The nuts are (hopefully) planning on protesting somewhere well out of sight of the President’s travel path. If not, it’s not going to end well.
Ryan
“including many who have indicated that they are coming from California and elsewhere.”
So it’s okay to be an outside agitator when it’s the cause of gun ownership, but when the topic is police abuse in Ferguson, they’re frowned upon?
Big Picture Pathologist
I seriously fucking hate these gun nuts.
Much like chickenhawks, they have an idealized view of what a shootout will entail. Like so many incidents recently have illustrated, between irresponsible owners, mistaken identity/friendly fire and just plain old bad luck, the only armed exchange with a positive outcome is the one that doesn’t happen.
Do they really think it’s wise to let those who would do them and their family harm to be able to be armed to the teeth with the most destructive weapons available?
Why are they limiting themselves to only be REactive to the violence out there? Aren’t any of them smart enough to be PROactive in reducing the number of these incidents? And how stupid do you have to be to conclude that diminishing — by ANY degree — the frequency/lethality of these crazed shooters is not an objective worth pursuing?
It really does seem to me that any progress at all will be fought tooth and nail by these imbeciles, which is why I feel like their input on this issue should matter less and less.
Joe Falco
Defend Roseburg – Deny Barack Obama
a.k.a.
The gun is good. The president is evil.
coin operated
I’m from Oregon, and attended college at UCC. In my travels, I’ve had to tell people that there is essentially two Oregons. I explain it this way…Portland and Eugene are liberal, but the rest of the state is as redneck as any small town in Arkansas or Louisiana.
I’m just hoping, with the arrival of the President today, that the people of Roseburg don’t go to any extreme effort to prove that fact on national television.
Frankensteinbeck
@Ryan:
Yes. They are Right. Ergo, anything they do to support their cause is honest, and anything you do to support your cause is cheating. By this same thought process, religious freedom only applies to Christianity. Why would it extend to people who are obviously wrong, when there’s only one real religion to be free to practice?
? Martin
I’m confused. I thought the 2nd amendment was the citizenry’s hedge against tyranny. How do we differentiate an armed protest from a coup attempt?
Frankensteinbeck
@Big Picture Pathologist:
Zimmerman was. That is not a joke. They would love, LOVE to be proactive, given permission to go hunting for anyone who looks like a criminal and be allowed to gun them down.
EDIT – Hell, they used to be proactive all the time. They called them ‘lynchings.’
Ryan
@coin operated: Also, Mr. President, stop by Eugene before heading out. It’s a nice place and the people there will love you.
Ruckus
@WereBear:
I never thought I would see negative self-awareness.
Really?
I think this is a pretty regular human trait. Someone not in thrall to a fantasy might not show this a lot but otherwise…..
This does bring up an idea. What if people feel really powerless? What can they do to not feel that way? Well a gun does have a pretty strong power, the power of life. Sure someone has to pull the trigger but at that point it’s about the strongest power someone who otherwise has little can have. And it has some magical power to overcome the government (or people who don’t look like you) taking control of your life, which seems to be a major worry to a large number of people. Of course there is an entire industry devoted to adding people to the ranks of powerless people and this doesn’t help the situation.
Ruckus
@Frankensteinbeck:
You must have had the lady at Home Depot in the Detroit area in mind.
SoupCatcher
@coin operated: And Roseburg is west of the Cascades. I lived on the east side – albeit in Washington instead of Oregon, but same smell – during the first half of Clinton’s presidency. I remember an Idaho militia trying to recruit high school students by passing around a VHS tape showcasing all the weaponry they had amassed. We used to watch it for shits and giggles because of the poor quality of production and narration, but there really wasn’t anything funny about morons with 50 caliber machine guns.
Elie
@coin operated:
Washington State is the same way… urban areas like Seattle are more “liberal”, but they are surrounded by rural areas and small towns as red as the reddest rose. They have a number of fantasies about liberals and what is happening in this country — that people are not just going to take their guns, but their land as well. These are communities with a lot of home schooling, evangelicals and aversion to anything government wants including vaccination. Did you all know we had heated debate over inspection of septic systems? These crackers wanted to keep their failed septic systems and I guess let their kids play in backyards of undrained feces rather than accept regular inspection.
There is a group of white people in this country that are in a different reality that is deeply fearful and angry. I dunno what is ahead but the issue of gun control/use is wound tightly into this and will not be addressed until the more fundamental social/psychological issue is faced squarely.
Paul in KY
The gun fetish, at it’s roots, is a legacy of the Middle Ages. Back then there was a complete monopoly of violence by rich guys who had professional weapons training, professional steel & high quality armour (not to mention a trained battle horse or two).
These guys could do whatever the hell they wanted & you (an unarmoured person) could do nothing about it. Unless they fell & could not get up or you pushed them into deep water, you could not hurt them. Then guns came along & became the great ‘force equalizers’ for those who did not have any of the above stuff.
Unfortunately, guns have now become so lethal & well made & work as intended all the time, that you give ANY individual the same power (or more) that these knights had 700 years ago.
Sane gun control & restrictions on firearms types are (to me) the only way to put the genie back in the bottle. I just don’t see it happening any time soon.
? Martin
@Ruckus:
That’s pretty much David Frum’s thesis: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/04/why-gun-rights-supporters-win-when-other-conservative-causes-lose/361396/
The NRA amplifies the message by piling onto other cultural issues that conservatives lose on – gay marriage, immigration, etc. They amplify the feeling of political helplessness and then offer them a solution – buy a gun. Buy a bigger gun. Buy more guns.
I think it’s very, very telling that the number of households with guns is falling while the number of guns in circulation is rising. You have a subpopulation – less than ⅓ of the population (27% might actually be about right) which are buying a large number of guns – on average 8 per household. Clinging to guns and religion seems to be quite accurate. Gun makers are struggling economically having to sell to a shrinking population and having to invest more and more to get that 9th gun sold.
I think the GOP itself is also amplifying the problem by being ineffective at winning any political battles, which of course is why they are now in complete disarray. Helplessness breeds desperation.
Paul in KY
@Amir Khalid: I’m sure there is somewhere about like that around here.
EconWatcher
Not a fan of Kennedy nostalgia.
At the risk of starting a flame war, I think it’s an excellent development that the Democratic Party has now outlived the influence of the Kennedy family.
Barack Obama is a far, far better man and a better leader than any of the Kennedy brothers. There is simply no comparison.
Let’s be honest: as human beings, the three of them were grotesque. Can’t we just admit that now?
While they were at the pinnacle of power, Bobby and Jack were passing a 19 year old girl back and forth between them like a nerf ball. The White House pool was like a scene from Caligula. And sleeping with the moll of a mob boss while you’re President of the United States–seriously?
Ted Kennedy of course left a young woman to drown in his car. If you ever feel the temptation to excuse that incident, go back and read the details in the Wikipedia description. It still has the power to shock; it’s completely despicable. Any ordinary person would have been convicted of at least manslaughter and probably murder, and would have done a very long prison term. Ted’s family got it all nicely fixed and even kept him his Senate seat.
These three represent to the most extreme degree what liberals are supposed to despise: the privilege, entitlement, and lack of accountability of rich white males. Do they really get a pass because they voted our way?
Amir Khalid
@? Martin:
I think that’s the myth that has grown up around the Second Amendment. In those days American states relied on armed citizens for security, in the absence of a standing army. The Amendment’s real raison d’être was to help ensure that citizens were prepared to respond to a call-up from their states. I remember reading that one of the first laws signed by President Washington required every male citizen to keep a gun, ammo, and camping gear ready for such a call-up.
Elizabelle
@Elie: We need to lance this boil somehow.
Not profit off it, as rightwing and too many conventional media and political types do now.
eric
@EconWatcher: and were born of a robber barron.
trollhattan
@EconWatcher:
If Bobby had not been assassinated he may well have gained the nomination and would surely have beaten Nixon. Do you honestly think the trajectory of the nation would have been the same, or worse had that occurred? I suspect it would have been rather different and much, much better, but those bullets ensured we’ll never know.
Frankensteinbeck
@Elizabelle:
That’s putting the cart before the horse. The fear was already there, and when it is, there’s always someone who will fan its flames to make a buck. Finding a way to stop people from doing so would help, but the problem remains, like it was endemic in back woods areas with no access to radio for two centuries.
Paul in KY
@EconWatcher: Bobby was the best of the 4. He was a better man than you make him to be.
Belafon
@EconWatcher: The same town had been visited by someone 47 years ago to talk about gun control. Yes, it was a Kennedy, but the point is that that was talked about 47 years ago and the result of inaction was a mass shooting, not a Kennedy.
coin operated
@SoupCatcher:
I grew up in Spokane when the militias were running around the forests north of Coeur d’Alene. Drove them fscking nuts when we elected a black mayor.
Flanders' Other Neighbor
@Iowa Old Lady:
Right? From a point of self-preservation, it seems like a questionable idea to be packin’ heat anywhere near the POTUS if you aren’t a cop or Secret Service guy.
Belafon
I wonder how many gun owners would be OK if we did away with hunting and fishing licenses and limits on number of animals caught?
trollhattan
@Paul in KY:
This was a man who could lead in trying times. We got Nixon instead.
coin operated
@Elie:
You are describing my brother to a tee. Homesteader in Idaho. Homeschooled the kids. Dug an outhouse every month or two. Made the Amish look down right sophisticated in comparison.
Couldn’t agree more. Maybe a couple more mass shootings and we might get the mental health debate we really need in congress. Not going to hold my breath though…
WereBear
@Ruckus: Oh, I am familiar with an utter lack of self-awareness, certainly.
I was only expressing my dismay with people who have managed to create a vacuum with it.
And my sympathy has somewhat diminished when they cling to something unhealthy and unlovely in order to prevent doing anything about their victimization. But then, that’s a pitfall of binary thinking. One is either the master, OR the slave.
The thought of freeing everyone just does not enter that tiny, dark, room.
trollhattan
@Belafon:
Maybe not surprisingly, only a minority of gun owners hunt so most would be unaffected by wholesale slaughter (of critters and one another).
scav
Gun violence taking out children in rural areas is a sign of patriotism, moral health and god-fearing values. Gun violence taking out children in urban (hint) areas is the only kind due to blight, poor parenting and cultural degeneracy.
Elie
@Elizabelle:
There is no way to “lance” this boil without causing undue violence. These folks will have to disarm themselves when they somehow feel “safe”. Not that other folks feel safe, by the way. Blacks and browns feel no “safer” and have many of the same concerns and fears about access to decent jobs,healthcare and safe communities. I guess these whites are not seeing solidarity with blacks and browns of the same vulnerability and that is a shame. Together, we could work for much better than we have, but that is an old story. Poor and working class whites in this group are the guardians of the situation. If we could all find common cause, it would change a whole lot in this country and the need for guns would diminish.
I know that I thought naively for a while that a transformational leader like Obama could make huge inroads into changing the dynamic of separation/segregation/racial anxiety. Maybe he has moved the needle a little bit, but its going to take a lot more and some self initiated change on the part of these folks. No one can change someone who doesn’t want to be changed or see value in a given change…Right now it seems they feel alienated from any possibility of making the connection to the rest of us. Instead of research on gun death causes, per se, this might be more to the point.
SoupCatcher
@coin operated: I can imagine. I moved from Los Angeles to Walla Walla to go to school and it was eye-opening for me to see what a difference lack of diversity makes.
trollhattan
@coin operated:
Oh god, the outhouse hole digging. Does he have moments of head-scratching “Uh, did I already put the shitter here, it seems too damn easy to dig?”
EconWatcher
@trollhattan:
I really don’t know.
I think the trajectory of the nation is determined more by deep economic, cultural, and technological developments than by individual personalities. And I think ’60s-style liberalism may have already burned itself out by 1968.
There was a deep divide between blue-collar and countercultural types already. Could Bobby Kennedy have bridged it? No idea. Historical counter-factuals are always speculative.
But these guys were jerks. This I know.
Mike J
@coin operated:
Every country has crazy people, only the US has mass shootings.
peach flavored shampoo
This was left out of my history lessons in school. What’s a moll?
Paul in KY
@trollhattan: Got me in tears at my desk. I was 9 when this happened. 1968 was the most fucked up, shitty year I’ve ever experienced. 2001 comes pretty close, for me.
trollhattan
@SoupCatcher:
Probably the Northwest’s funniest rural-urban conglomeration is the tri-cities, where rural redneck intermixes with all the Hanford PhDs. Talk about strange bedfellows!
ksmiami
There is only one solution to this and it is actuarial. You own guns you better effing have insurance; your gun is used inappropriately? Then you pay. Don’t have insurance, go to jail. NO EXCEPTIONS; Let the money guys figure it out. And insurance companies are much MUCH bigger than the gun companies.
Belafon
@trollhattan: And I would love to see the hunters have to deal with “I have a second amendment right to use my gun as I see fit!” because I’m pretty sure most hunters know why there are limits.
Gin & Tonic
@peach flavored shampoo: A term for the girlfriend of a gangster.
Amir Khalid
@peach flavored shampoo:
Archaic slang for a gangster’s girlfriend.
Keith G
Repeating myself from the previous thread which is essentially on the same topic:
Yes, it is a shame that the overwhelming majority of folks living in and around Rosenberg are not going to be thoroughly welcoming of President Obama’s trip there. I imagine, however, that there is a fair amount of people who want to hear him speak and even a bit larger amount who need to hear him speak.
Leaders in a democracy should make it a point to go places where their message isn’t met with absolute or even a high degree of acceptance. But the bottom line is that we shouldn’t treat the entire Rosenberg community on the basis of what its noisiest and most hateful citizens are able to get into press.
Elie
@Keith G:
Amen, brother
Paul in KY
@ksmiami: That’s a great idea, but I think it would have to pass thru congress to get your idea instituted.
Punchy
@trollhattan: Maybe I’m too stupid to understand, but how does one keep the…uh….remenants of said outhouses from leeching into one’s well water? Does deepness of the well prevent this, or dumb luck?
trollhattan
@Paul in KY:
Even as, and perhaps due to being a young kid it was hard to have any perspective about what seemed like a precipitous descent into doom. With the constant backdrop of the Cold War America seemed to be conduction war on ourselves.
I remember watching RFK’s funeral and the FBI telling Mrs. King her husband’s assassin had been arrested. It was simply too much.
Mike J
@ksmiami:
If, as gun fondlers insist, guns make you safer, wouldn’t insurance companies give you a discount for owning one? It has nothing to do with good or evil or constitutional rights, it’s just dollars and cents. If guns kept you safer, insurance companies would have to pay out less. They would insist you have a gun.
peach flavored shampoo
@Gin & Tonic: Ah….OK. On the Sopranos, they called them something different. Something longer, more Italian-ish. And yes, the Sopranos is the extent of my gangsta knowledge.
trollhattan
@Punchy:
Yes!
Presuming there’s no power to operate a well pump, then any well will be shallow and certainly threatened by leeching waste. Or if they get water from a creek or spring, it damn well be upslope. (But, uh, those damn neighbors!)
Botsplainer
Regarding the proliferation of guns in the hands of an ever shrinking plurality of gun owners, I’ve long held that if you are feeling a need to have multiple firearms in each room of the house, you’re not going to survive the encounter.
I blame it on an aging white male demographic plagued by low T and erectile dysfunction, but is inadequately treated by the health care system while being inundated by propaganda.
Frankensteinbeck
@EconWatcher:
I do not give a good god damn who they slept with, or who any political figure sleeps with, as long as they’re not trying to hypocritically beat me over the head with morals they don’t follow. People have sex, and I have no interest in blaming them for doing so, or even implying it’s something that needs justification.
THAT, on the other hand, was scary as Hell and a giant sign that the family was corrupt and self-serving.
EDIT – @Punchy:
Often it does not. Disease due to contaminated water is a major problem in rural areas, especially around farms, and always has been historically. There’s a reason we don’t get much cholera these days. My agricultural engineering professor told a story that a friend of his bought a house in Eastern Kentucky, and was declaring with joy how clear and fresh the water from the stream was. My professor told him to get it tested. The levels of E. Coli were twenty times higher than is safe to touch.
SoupCatcher
@trollhattan:So then it will probably scare you that, at the time I was living in Walla Walla (pre-wineries explosion) a drive to Tri-Cities for the boat show was something people would look forward to.
I was working on my private pilot’s license and the ultimate thing to do for other students was to fly their significant other to Pasco, borrow a car from the FBO, and take him/her out to dinner. I, on the other hand, couldn’t stand the place. Any chance I got I was driving to Seattle.
Doug R
@trollhattan: It’s those Canadians driving down to Disneyland.
ksmiami
@Paul in KY: I’m pretty sure the insurance lobby could start something – I mean they own enough congress people I’m sure. Then you let the states get in on the take. Will no one think of the extra revenues$$$
trollhattan
@EconWatcher:
Am pretty confident RFK would have not have escalated Vietnam and possibly gotten us completely out. How much domestic progressive legislation he’d have succeeded in is anyone’s guess, but the Supreme Court and other federal judgeship appointments would have laid a far different path for that branch.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Robin G.:
This is giving me a very bad feeling. Charlie Pierce noted http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a38588/roseburg-crazy-leaders-obama/earlier this week:
The “on a lot of levels” sentence is the very troubling part, given the current comments out of Roseburg.
BobS
It’s really no different than when all those armed black folks used to show up en masse when George W made an appearance. The Bush administration was remarkably tolerant of any visible display of dissent.
Punchy
@SoupCatcher: I’ve always loved the melodious, alliterative sound of “Walla Walla Washington”. Makes the speaker of said locale sound like s/he’s stammering/stuttering. Even better would be if I lived on a street in town named “Wall” or “Waller” or best, “Washington” and had to give out my addy over the phone to someone in Indiana. YMMV.
EconWatcher
@Frankensteinbeck:
I think you’d have to agree at least that there were outrageous risks–blackmail and otherwise–from sleeping with Sam Giancana’s girlfriend.
scav
@peach flavored shampoo: Slang will vary by group. Moll has been around for a long time in English with slightly different twists. Was shorthand for Mary, stood in for woman, esp. those of the streets by 1600 and yes I looked but, I knew it was older than gangster US. Somehow thought it had a connection to Dolly Mop (wrong, except for similarity in meaning). So now I get to play with moll-buzzer and the other meaning of dolly for a bit.
D58826
And parading around with guns at an event that is to remember 9 people who died as a result of firearms will NOT put gun owners in a bad light?. I’m waiting for the rest of the world to post travel advisories to people planning on coming to the US. The natives are insane so travel at your own risk!!!!
Paul in KY
@ksmiami: Hope you are right about that!
Paul in KY
@BobS: They were nothing if not tolerant of visible dissent.
PaulW
i have been calling the gun a false idol for years.
truly, the gun-worshipers want their blood sacrifice and they are taking our children and families to sate their devotion.
BobS
@Punchy: Local health departments will generally mandate that wells and septic tanks and their fields are separated by 75 ft or so. There also are standards for the size of the tank and design of the field that’s typically based on the number of bedrooms in the home and the underlying soil.
ArchTeryx
@Iowa Old Lady: If Obama were *anything* like W, he’d have them penned up in Free Speech Zones 20 miles from the visit, after being searched and all their guns confiscated by SS people.
What, three threads and nobody remembers Bush’s Free Speech Zones?
ksmiami
@Paul in KY: Maybe I should place a call…
SoupCatcher
@Punchy: “The town so nice, they named it twice.”
eta We got a lot of mileage out of Wala meaning “nothing” in Tagalog. It’s nothing twice!
ThresherK (GPad)
@Frankensteinbeck: I never see projection in others. But I’m sure you do.
Gravenstone
@Iowa Old Lady: Is it bad of me to picture some enterprising soul getting on the high ground overlooking the assemblage of gun nuts, equipped with an array of laser pointers. As the angry morons mill about in fear and loathing, he switches on the aaray. Suddenly a couple dozen attendees are wearing a wee angry red dot on their face or forehead, visible not to themselves but those surrounding them. Imagine the paranoid screams of fear and rage as they assume themselves targeted by a dozen snipers. Imagine the collection of soiled pants that ensue.
D58826
@Amir Khalid:
That was one of the delicious ironies that came up during the debate on the Obamacare mandate. To think the first government mandate involved the second amendment. Love it!!
gene108
When do we get to mandatory gun ownership?
If you get shot it is your own fault for not being quick enough on the draw.
D58826
Texas Southern University on lockdown after a student shot at a student housing complex. Only one so it is really that important (other than to the ‘one shot’)
SFAW
@EconWatcher:
It seems clear that you hate the Kennedy family. But to entertain the idea that RFK would not have been better for the country than Nixon because of
is seeing what you want to see, not assessing the reality of 1968 objectively. It also extrapolates to the idea that Bush and Gore presidencies would have been no different, or that Goldwater and Johnson, or Obama and McCain/Romney would have been effectively the same, because societal forces, etc., etc.
And it’s not just “individual personalities,” it’s what those individuals do (or can be expected to do), the policies they enact or push, the people they bring in to implement those policies, and so forth.
While you’re certainly entitled to believe personalities matter little or not-at-all, the truth_value of it is, shall we say, suspect.
coin operated
@D58826:
No. To the gun fetish crowd, the dead are martyrs and carrying a weapon to their funeral is almost like conferring sainthood on the deceased.
FourTen
I’m setting the over/under for confed flags at this gathering of “patriots” at 4.5
Michael Bersin
@dmsilev:
I’m really hoping (“Please, oh, please, I’ll never ask for anything else ever again!”) for Rep. Vicky Hartzler (r – the Chinese are spying on us through our toasters):
Speaker, speaker, who’s gonna be our speaker?
BobS
@ArchTeryx: A (kind of) funny story. My son was living in Marquette, Mi in the early 2000’s when Bush made an appearance in the city. His dislike for Bush (and Republicans in general) is something that’s been passed on for generations in our family (UAW), but he figured WTF, it’s a chance to see a sitting POTUS (history was one of his majors), so he got himself a ticket to the event. While waiting in line to get into the auditorium, friends of his among the demonstrators began chiding him for going to see The Idiot. At which point the Secret Service pulled him out of line — when he showed his ticket to the event, it was taken from him and torn up. Whereupon he took his rightful spot among the demonstrators. Personally, I was appreciative of the civics lesson he was provided.
SFAW
@Gravenstone:
Yes. With the expected number of gun-toters in the crowd? I think the stains would end up being red, not brown.
Or was there something about Gun Free Zones around the President that I overlooked? If so, then it would just be an assholish thing to do; if guns are allowed in the area, then it’s merely dangerous.
Or are you under the impression that the 2nd Amendment crazies would all shit themselves, rather than react by firing at something/anything.?
WereBear
@FourTen: I’ve come to see gun worship as just another symptom of Confederacy disease: the hatred of government when it tries to save people from their own idiocy.
Frankensteinbeck
@EconWatcher:
No, actually. Like JFK would care who knew he was sleeping around.
Face
@gene108: I read this comment and automatically, this comes to mind:
“Had a chance to run, pulled out his shotgun
Quick on the draw, I thought I’d be dead
He put the gun to my head and this is what he said”
Isn’t life just a series of Beastie lyrics?
Humboldtblue
Two Roseburg police officers were the first on scene, They fired three rounds at the suspect and hit him once, the other two rounds went into the wall. The suspect then entered a classroom and shot himself in the head.
The officers have been cleared in a justified use of force
Michael Bersin
@Paul in KY:
Crossbow. It changed the equation. Minimal training, point and shoot.
JPL
@D58826: There was another shooting on campus two days ago… http://abc13.com/news/one-person-injured-in-shooting-on-tsu-campus/1020881/
? Martin
@Amir Khalid: Right. There was no professional army, there was no standing national guard. And back then, there was no meaningful difference between weaponry for the military and for general survival. Neither a reliable handgun nor a grocery store had yet been invented. You still had a lot of indigenous people that citizens were displacing causing regular friction. You had minimal government policing outside of a few cities and no animal control. There was so much less that government was doing for citizens back then (and a few problems that government was creating – such as displacing indigenous people) that firearms just made so much more sense.
And remember that firearms were flintlocks. You might get one shot before needing a 20 second reload, and the odds of that shot misfiring were pretty high. 18th century weapons simply were incapable of producing the kinds of social dynamics that you see now. A platoon would be lucky to kill as many people as quickly as the VATech shooter did. An individual with a gun was at a significant disadvantage against one with a knife. Guns worked well against wildlife, and worked well in groups. 100 guns together was powerful. 1 gun was a liability – which is why the bayonet was a required component.
The dynamics of firearms changed completely in the mid 1800s when metal cartridges really got dialed in. That’s what led to the invention of the repeating rifle and the revolver, and effective automatic weapons. That was when mass killing became possible. The American revolution only cost 10,000 lives in battle on both sides. The US Civil war had much better weapons, and 200,000 were killed in battle. I suspect the founders would have had a rather different perspective on the 2nd amendment at the dawn of the US Civil War. Surely a different perspective now.
benw
@FourTen: I’ll take the over, because THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST WILL RISE AGAIN!
Mike in NC
@D58826: I think something like that actually happened after a number of European tourists were mugged/killed in Florida several years ago. Governments were advising people to reconsider travel plans. This was all before SYG.
Mark
The people of Roseburg need their guns to protect themselves and their families from bad guys.
Didn’t work out too good for the people of Roseburg and their families. A bad guy with a gun came and killed 9 of their citizens and there weren’t any good guys with a gun to protect their citizens. The bad guy with a gun injured many more also.
Don’t let a failed belief system get in your way though.
The Other Chuck
@Mike J:
Nope, they even have mass shootings, just not so god damned many. Maybe Americans really are uniquely broken, but to me that then sounds like we need even more gun control, not less…
Face
@D58826: Campus shutdown unpossible. We’ve been told repeatedly:
1) Campuses are safer if everyone has a gun
2) Good guys use their guns to keep everyone safe
Ergo, the use a gun by a gunman should have rendered the campus SAFER, not more hostile, to life.
The Other Chuck
@Mark: The gun cannot fail. It can only be failed. Repeat until it becomes true.
? Martin
@gene108:
Never. You think they want Obama handing out guns to black people?
Just look at Fox coverage – black people with guns are thugs and represent a failure of the country, white people with guns are patriots. There is an incredibly clear racial overtone to gun ownership.
Mike J
@The Other Chuck: Fewer guns is the reason why other countries don’t have on average one mas shooting per day, like the US does.
gocart mozart
Maybe they should ask Laurel Harper to give the eulogy.
Michael Bersin
@BobS:
It was probably not the Secret Service. Most probably someone on the advance team (political job).
WereBear
Looking back though, hasn’t it been ever thus? One part of the population — enlightened, forward-thinking, practical — dragging along the kicking and screaming, the frightened and superstitious and small-minded.
Every step of the goldurned way.
Roger Moore
@Elie:
A huge amount of the rural anger and resentment is because the economy of rural areas has been getting more and more desperate for decades. Mechanization has been killing agricultural employment, globalization and environmental regulations have been hurting mining, and a huge combination of factors has been hurting logging. That has cascaded through the whole rural economy, so that small towns throughout the country are in dire distress.
I assume that the thing about the septic systems is an example of exactly what they’re upset about. Most of the people with failing septic systems probably already know, but they’re too poor to do anything about it. All that government inspections are going to do is to order them to do something they can’t afford to do. How is that supposed to help anyone?
Citizen_X
@D58826: Well, it’s Texas, and coastal elites may not understand, but guns are really important to the culture, and your average students understand this better than those pointy-headed academics, and…
What? Historically black university? GHETTO CULTURE! NO RESPECT FOR LIFE OR LEARNING! THOSE PEOPLE! LOW-HANGING PANTS! GANGSTA RAP!
Elizabelle
@Roger Moore: Government could be their friend, if there was a program to help fund bringing septic systems up to health standards.
And Roseburg has only itself to blame if they just shot themselves in the foot (pun) over increasing tourism. A lot of people not named Obama might also choose to stay away. Have they no gas stations? No cafes and inns? No stores?
scav
@Roger Moore: It’s not just cash. Small town for my family had a daughter of the town come back, be mayor and wrestle through getting federal or state funds to upgrade the towns system. They still rode her out of town on a rail. They sure enough lacked funds later when they had to upgrade.
@Elizabelle: ETA. Yes, and No.
BobS
@Michael Bersin: Very possibly political operatives. However his description of the two polite and physically fit young guys in black suits is also pretty consistent with the agents I’ve encountered when they’ve been stationed in the hospital during presidential visits to the area.
SatanicPanic
@Roger Moore: I don’t know, wealthy people in these places seem to be just as reflexively anti-government.
Roger Moore
@Amir Khalid:
I think this is not quite correct. The purpose of the Second Amendment was to allow the US to rely on armed citizens for security specifically so there would be no need for a large standing army. The Founding Fathers recognized that a large standing army- at least an army organized on conventional European lines, which was all they knew- was a perpetual threat to democracy because it was always sitting there waiting to start a coup or a civil war. They saw a militia as the only plausible alternative.
WaterGirl
@trollhattan: thanks so much for that link.
SatanicPanic
It’s kind of funny to see how white conservatives are doing basically a bizarro version of late 60s liberal counter-culture= moving out to the sticks to drop out of society, playing dress up, devising ridiculous political strategies. They even held their goofball Woodstock. Weirdos
jl
I see from various blogs and new stories that there are rumors that the House Speaker crisis is partly due to fact that all the GOP serious daddies are having naughty girly-time sex affairs! And they are the family values party who witch hunted Bill Clinton until they got him on blowing an intern, so can’t have none of their leaders in an affair of history of affairs… and they all have them because they are the family values hypocrites.
What a clown show.
Maybe they will lift the debt ceiling and let the country run so they can have more time for their little toad and frog ideological kabuki fights and their soap operas. I mean, those latter two are the really important things to them. There is always some grounds for hope.
Edit: If Newt’s personal life of betrayal and infidelity is long enough in the past that he is officially repented and redeemed and hasn’t backslided recently, he might be the best guy.
Calouste
@Paul in KY: Knights lost their monopoly on violence way before fire arms were widely available in Europe, in 1302 to be exact: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Golden_Spurs
D58826
@? Martin: I think at one point the native American with a bow and arrow(s) had the advantage over the old single shot rifle. He could simply reload and fire faster than the rifleman. The repeater changed all of that of course.
Matt McIrvin
@Roger Moore: My impression was that there were actually two factions: one that wanted no army at all, and another that was OK with a standing army but needed to placate the first faction. So the Constitution ended up providing for a regular military, but the Second Amendment was there to assure the anti-army people that the state militias weren’t going away.
coin operated
@Roger Moore:
This. But we’re dealing with rednecks here, so history is some of that mamby pamby book lernin and such.
SFAW
@jl:
For what?
Amir Khalid
@jl:
The House Republican caucus, or more precisely the Teabagger tendency which has taken it over, seems to want a Speaker who can effectively oppose Obama by doing things not actually within the powers of that office. Newt tried to do that to Hillary’s husband some 20 years ago, so in that sense one might consider him the man for the job they have in mind.
Then again, given the political consequences of Newt’s attempt, one might consider that a pretty foolish thing to want.
Julie
I’m just going to leave this right here: Live updates from Roseburg. Armed protesters flying Confederate flags.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’m shocked to see one of our Constitutional activists carrying a sign that says “Go Back To Kenya“
fuckwit
Murder is the policy of this country, specifically, murder of the poor, the unarmed, the minorities, the foriegn.
I’m on food stamps. It was a life-saver when I first got it: they retroactively gave me enough to stock up my cabinet, which I did. It’s $150/mo. After a while, gettting to the bottom of the cabinet again, living off of what they give me every month now. Now, some math. That’s $150/mo, which is $5/day. Five dollars. Maximum. Every day. For enough food to stay alive. If I try to have 3 meals a day, that’s $1.60 per meal. Per meal! I can get pretty damn close to this by economizing, buying bulk, eating mostly vegetarian, relying on college-dorm-ish staples (cup-o-noodlees are well under that when bought in packs), but I’m lucky to have a place to live and a place to cook and electricity etc. If I were buying pre-made stuff I’d be pretty fucked, a sammich at Safeway is $4.
Kill kill kill kill kill the pooor…. kill kill kill kill kill the pooorrr… kill kill killl kill killl the pooooor toniiiiightt!
J R in WV
@peach flavored shampoo:
@Paul in KY:
I was in college and away from home for the first time when Bobby Kennedy was shot right after winning the primary in California. Same for Martin L King, Jr. It was hard to see the news shows on TV sitting in the dorm lounge.
There were a lot of serious liberals in the room, and I was naive about politics. You mean there are opinions different from my father’s opinion? How can this be???
Ted Kennedy did mess up with he didn’t try to save his girlfriend after driving off the bridge into the marsh. Was this worse than Nixon’s repeated lies about peace talks with the NVA? Nixon killed way more than a single girlfriend, after all! He and Kissinger killed hundreds of thousands of farmers in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam.
Most of which was Illegal under the UN war crimes laws.
I once met a gun collector who was buying guns as an investment. He told me that his wife would be able to sell a gun or two and live on the proceeds for a couple of months.
He was a good looking guy, with a goatee type of beard, which he had dyed in tiny vertical stripes of red, white and blue.
So he might have been stranger than his speech sounded, and stranger than his appearance indicated as well.
There are a lot of weird gun collectors out there. I have guns, some of which are family pieces which shouldn’t be fired any more. Others were gifts from a friend, his father’s small pistols. One shotgun which was a birthday present, and two pistols which I bought for myself.
My wife also has one modern revolver.
Neither of us is crazed right-wing-nut. Mrs. J is a former elected union officer. I am a veteran of the US Navy, and a retired software developer. We live on a fairly large tract of land in the Appalachian woods of West Virginia. Neither of us has ever fired a shot at another person, ever!
I gotta stop talking about this shit! Dinner is about ready, Greek style meat/pasta casserole with a big salad. Red wine. Should be good. Fuck the Republican nut-jobs, they aren’t American by any definition I know of.
Paul in KY
@Michael Bersin: Crossbows were expensive & at long range, ineffective against good armor. A longbow was more effective at long range, but took about 10 years training to really use it as an expert.
Paul in KY
@Roger Moore: Militia is also cheaper than a standing army.
Paul in KY
@Calouste: I’m talking about when a mounted/armored knight was riding around the countryside causing havoc. You, an un-armoured peasant could not stop them. I’m not talking about military actions.