Time to set the goddamned “Days Without a School Shooting” counter back to zero. This day’s shooting was at a high school in Maryland. Details are sketchy, but here’s a summary from Channel 4 Washington:
Multiple Injuries Reported in Shooting at St. Mary’s Co. High School
Multiple people were injured in a shooting at a high school in southeast Maryland Tuesday morning, the St. Mary’s County sheriff’s office confirmed.
The shooting happened Tuesday morning at Great Mills High School in Great Mills, Maryland…
Some of the injuries were critical, sheriff’s officials said. It’s not clear how many people were injured at the school about 60 miles southeast of Washington, D.C. Deputies were called to the school just before 8 a.m.
The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student activists expressed solidarity:
Less than a WEEK ago Great Mills High School students walked out with us to protest gun violence…now they’re experiencing it for themselves. The state of our country is disgusting – I’m so sorry, Great Mills.
— Jaclyn Corin (@JaclynCorin) March 20, 2018
We are Here for you, students of Great Mills ? together we can stop this from ever happening again https://t.co/bkzL1FcVgu
— Emma González (@Emma4Change) March 20, 2018
The March for Our Lives rally in DC and 800-plus affiliated events worldwide are taking place this Saturday. If you want to help but can’t make it to the DC march, you can find a local march here.
Open thread.
different-church-lady
Once again, it’s Too-Soon-To-Talk-About-Gun-Control O’Clock in America!
Butch
Are there weather contingencies for the Saturday march? Forecasts are for another nor’eastern in the DC area.
PaulWartenberg
You would think the NRA would have sent out word through their grapevine “psst hey guys keep it cool, these school shootings are starting to make us look bad.”
obviously not every gun nut got that memo.
Christ. More kids and teachers and parents and communities fucked up because of another angry guy (and odds are it’s a guy) with guns.
cosima
And the new package bomb at FedEx facility in Texas, suspected link to the other package bombs delivered to households. Which amendment is it that covers the RWNJ’s freedom to blow up people? Is that also covered under the 2nd amendment?
Frankensteinbeck
@PaulWartenberg:
As gets noted occasionally, it’s not that women don’t commit murder, but that they hardly ever use guns.
Or to quote gallows humor I once heard, “We used to call mass shooters axe murderers. It really slowed them down!”
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
I heard an NPR report on three white guys who plotted to blow up an apartment complex full of Somali immigrants. White men are not showing up well these days. Apologies for the generalization.
Stacy
Sheriff reports that 3 students are in critical condition including the shooter who was engaged by the school resource officer.
Elizabelle
@Butch: So far, Saturday looks OK for DC. Scattered clouds and sun; high of 46.
Sunday is when the worse weather rolls in: snow and rain. I hope it is not more fast moving.
Villago Delenda Est
And cash registers cah-ching for the merchants of death, yet again.
Villago Delenda Est
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): Instead of being afraid of blah hip hop kids, we should be much more concerned about white male yahoos in pick-em-up trucks.
Frankensteinbeck
@Stacy:
My god, is this the first time ever that a bad guy with a gun was actually stopped by a good guy with a gun?
EDIT – I believe the counterargument we should have prepared – and the high schoolers already do – is “There wouldn’t even be three victims if the killer didn’t have a gun.”
Betty Cracker
This is awesome — via Politico:
Corcoran is the scumbag who recently posted one of the most blatantly racist political ads I’ve ever seen — I think I posted it here; it depicted a sinister-looking, vaguely Hispanic-appearing guy in a hoodie shooting a white, red-headed teenager on a suburban sidewalk.
Anyhoo, if that blood-gargling sociopath Hammer wants to bludgeon Corcoran and other gun-humping red district Republicans for deviating from NRA orthodoxy, I’m not going to shed any tears over it.
germy
LAO
@Betty Cracker:
You know, the only thing I truly enjoy about the Trump era, is watching Republican attack dog (I see you Rick Wilson) turn their venom on other Republicans. It’s a small thing, but it does help me get up in the mornings.
kindness
Uh oh. This new shooting means we can’t talk about guns until everyone has spent two or three weeks sending their ‘Thoughts & Prayers’.
I don’t have a Christian perspective on the afterlife for myself but I sure would like to be a fly on the wall for those people that do (Republicans) when they approach the Pearly Gates. Especially the part where St. Peter bitch slaps these horrible people all the way to Hell for their transgressions in this life. The look on their faces would be priceless.
bystander
Tears of laughter, maybe. I’m still chuckling to myself about Tillerson getting choked up in his Farewell to the department he tried to destroy.
As for the school shooting, I’m dreading hearing the shooter had some conventional rifle and that will prove there’s no need to regulate assault rifles.
tobie
St. Mary’s County is one of the many rural, Republican counties of Maryland. I’m very sorry they’ve been hit with this tragedy and hope that they will revise their views on gun control now that they see their children at risk.
My rightwing Congresscritter Andy Harris (MD-1) held a telephone townhall yesterday and repeated the mantra, “The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” He blamed school shootings on the fact that they are gun-free zones and offer no protection for students and pointed to Baltimore as an example of how ineffective gun laws are in curbing black market sales of weaponry. The race-baiting was so thick I hung up in disgust. The pattern was clear: black majority city–black market–black guys with guns.
Nicole
This quote from Hawkeye (M*A*S*H Hawkeye, not The Avengers Hawkeye) has been making the rounds lately. Ah, for the time in entertainment when the hero eschewed firearms and the gun-humper was the cowardly object of ridicule:
Hawkeye: I will not carry a gun, Frank. When I got into this war, I had a very clear understanding with the Pentagon: no guns.
[Frank snorts in disgust]
Hawkeye: I’ll carry your books, I’ll carry a torch, I’ll carry a tune, I’ll carry on, carry over, carry forward, Cary Grant, cash-and-carry, carry me back to Old Virginie, I’ll even ‘hari-kari’ if you show me how, but I will not carry a gun.
tobie
@Stacy:
I don’t mean to be obtuse but what does “engaged” mean in this case?
Kay
We’re all going to the Cleveland march. It’s not on the official list of events in the Cleveland park where it is to be held, so I got nervous.
I’m wondering if the high schoolers didn’t submit their permit app :)
Anyway! We’ll march until they kick us out of there.
Just Some Fuckhead
I’m shocked the “Hug a Psychopath so he Won’t Murder You” conservative plan to end gun violence isn’t working.
Steeplejack
@Butch:
We’re at the bottom of the storm zone here in the DMV (DC-MD-VA, via perky local TV anchors). The bad weather will be later today and tomorrow. Supposed to be mid-40s and sunny on Saturday.
Gin & Tonic
@Just Some Fuckhead: Long time no see.
Amir Khalid
@tobie:
In this context, it means “shot at”.
Cermet
This strikes home all too clearly in both the figurative and literal sense. This is getting old but will touch more and more people/children as it continues – While I hope no one has to read a text from their terrified child (Yes, I am one such but got lucky that it turned out ‘harmless’) it will happen because we, as a country, put money and greed ahead of children..
The Moar You Know
@tobie: Shot the guy until his gun was empty.
Brachiator
Who was the first lame ass political muthafucker to offer “thoughts and prayers?”
scav
@Just Some Fuckhead: That sounds remarkably like (at least some of) the conservatives have finally embraced the concept of Gay Marriage, (albeit reinterpreted in traditional terms — one of the partners is in fear of their life and in charge of hugging).
@tobie: But it does seem unfair that the school resource officer has to marry all of them. Is this that slippery slope we were all promised!?
Roger Moore
@PaulWartenberg:
It doesn’t work that way. A certain fraction of gun nuts don’t care about memos like that because they’re nuts and just want to shoot people. Also, the NRA still thinks mass shootings are good for business, both because they cause sales of the gun used to spike and because they can turn the whole thing and use it to sell more guns to others (e.g. “Arm teachers”). They aren’t going to change their mind until they start losing badly everywhere.
germy
Amir Khalid
@Nicole:
Ah, you mean Capt. Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce, MD.
Frankensteinbeck
@bystander:
I’m not. Nobody gives a shit about the details, and never really did (or at least haven’t for decades). There’s the people who are angry about guns, and the people who want to defend guns to the death, and people who aren’t listening anyway. If it’s a conventional rifle, it will just feed the angry people to want to get rid of ALL guns.
Roger Moore
@Frankensteinbeck:
It’s happened before. In almost every case- including this one BTW- is was an actual military or law enforcement person with the gun, not some random yahoo.
germy
Ohio Mom
@Butch: Cincinnati is supposed to get a dusting of snow too. Oh well, I never wash and put away the winter clothes until May.
I bought some small flags at the hardware store the other day. One thing I noticed at the anti-Trump rally last month (when he visited that machine shop to hype his tax cuts) was that our side needs flags.
The Tea Partiers across the street were waving them like the flag was theirs alone. I hate the meme that the right is more patriotic than we are — we all know the truth is the opposite.
So I have warm clothes and flags, and a clear calendar for Saturday.
gvg
@Kay: they were denied the permit, supposedly because someone else already had first dibbs and it was supposed to be someone shooting a film or something. No one spoke up and said they were the company filming so it seemed suspicious. Apparently people are just ignoring the non permit. Not sure what’s going to happen. Normally I want permits but I also think political protest is basically free speech especially a protest in Washington DC. I find it credible that Trumps administration would just make up something.
Frankensteinbeck
@germy:
I am seethingly disgusted by that hypocritical ratfucker trying to coopt a march about an issue he’s against. He’s determined to convince every young idealist that the Democrats are the real enemies, and I’m glad the kids are having none of his bullshit.
LAO
He’s a little late to the party —
Brachiator
@kindness:
I would like to see some Dante’s Inferno level punishment where gun nuts and gun apologists sit naked on assault rifles for all eternity. The rifles would, of course, go off periodically.
Amir Khalid
@Roger Moore:
A random yahoo with a gun would almost certainly have been little or no help, agreed. But even with a trained LEO you have to factor in some good luck. In a high-stress active-shooter scenario, even the best-trained professional will not necessarily be able to perform as needed. I suspect the security officer had some situational advantage over the shooter.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@LAO: Wow. I was skeptical of the story about Dowd wanting out and trump wanting to get rid of Cobb, but that’s a big gun. I’m a little surprised Olsen wants to dirty up his sainted reputation in the Village
The Moar You Know
@Ohio Mom: I will never understand this. This should have been SOP since the 1960s. Every goddamn decent liberal person out in public should have a flag. Co-opt it and make it ours. Make the conservatives turn traitor on the American flag. They can have their stepped-on snake flag, everyone thinks that one is idiotic.
I fully expect this to never happen, and we’ll let the conservatives wrap themselves in the symbols of the nation they’re trying to destroy.
LAO
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: At the moment, Olsen is performing a “conflict search” so he won’t comment but I say BS. If he signs on, the Republican party’s total capitulation to Trump is complete.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
Did someone here about a week ago say that the Walk Up Not Out campaign was a Russian-planted effort to so further discord?
I’ve been trying to confirm that… it was such an ignorant damn idea. Victim blaming along with the usual jumbo serving of thoughts-and-prayers gumbo.
Raven
Cue up “good guy with gun”
Betty Cracker
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’m a little surprised by Olsen’s parachuting onto the Trumptanic too. As you noted, he has an undeserved good rep with the Villagers.
germy
@Frankensteinbeck: He thinks he’ll jump into their crowd, like Rosie Ruiz jumping ahead of a marathon, and become their “leader”. It reminds me of the old photo of young wilmer with the smirk on his face at a 1960s civil rights march. “I don’t remember him,” John Lewis famously said.
woodrowfan
my morning class was interrupted by a fire alarm yesterday. My first thought was “damn, there goes the class.” My second was “I hope there isn’t a gunman” while I listened for gunfire and looked how to block my classroom doors. PEOPLE, THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE OR NORMAL!!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@germy: saw on twitter that he brought his own bullhorn to the rally last week. I don’t know if that was snark, a metaphor or a fact
JPL
@LAO: If he says no, Trump will just say it was fake news anyway.
Betty Cracker
Update on the school shooting from local law enforcement — the shooter, who used a handgun, is dead. The girl he shot is in critical condition, and a boy who was also shot is in stable condition.
Not sure how to interpret that last part — sounds like there may be some confusion on whether the cop’s bullet killed the shooter or if the shooter killed himself.
LAO
@JPL: He’ll say it even if Olsen joins the legal team.
woodrowfan
@Ohio Mom: I like to use the original “Betsy Ross” version myself. If I still lived in Ohio I’d use the state flag too. I LOVE Ohio’s flag! Virginia’s is DULLLLLLLLL..
cosima
@West of the Rockies (been a while): I don’t think it was anything that originated with Russia, but I would not be surprised if it was an NRA effort. Someone (here in the UK) posted it to her FB page and I had to gently scold — she does not understand it from the gun control issue, only sees it as some beautiful effort to get kids to be nicer to each other. She had shared a post from a ‘teacher’ who said ‘I’ll be putting this up in my classroom today’ w/a photo of a whiteboard with all of the walkup talking points. The ‘teacher’ was in a deep red town in a deep red state, which immediately gave me pause. A bit more sleuthing and I felt free to comment negatively, as its origins appeared dubious at best (supposedly all the idea of some wonderful thoughtful teacher somewhere in the US, Barry something or other).
germy
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I saw him on CBS News, they showed a brief clip of the rally, lots of students holding signs, they cut to wilmer yelling into a bullhorn but didn’t include the audio.
Last Sunday on 60 Minutes, the students were interviewed and they said they refuse to be used by politicians. Politicians have asked for their endorsements and they’ve refused.
HeleninEire
@LAO: I thought he was best friends with Comey. I remember Comey talking very fondly about Olsen’s wife Barbara when she was killed on 9-11.
LAO
@HeleninEire: Interesting.
Barbara
@LAO: The real issue is whether Olsen’s firm comes along with Olsen and whether Olsen gets to tell the second rate bullies who managed to pass the bar to take a hike.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Damn, they’re smart. They hammer home voter registration every chance they get.
Immanentize
@LAO: I agree. I can’t see Olsen joining the team unless he thinks that he has not had sufficient TV face time in a while. The defense team is getting older and older
diGenova: 73
Olsen: 77
This really is a generational fight.
Immanentize
@HeleninEire: Maybe they are bringing Olsen in as perhaps the last best chance to soothe the beast.
Or for plea negotiations? “Jarred will plead to ____ if Ivanka is spared….”
les
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady):
In Kansas, of course. Best part: they tried to get a change of venue from mid-Kansas to Western Kansas, on the grounds that they deserved a jury with more Trump voters. Totally normal.
delk
NRA mouthpiece Dana Loesch last night:
tobie
@LAO: Trump’s interviewed a lot of attorneys. I think we should wait and sea if Olson signs on to the team.
I’m expecting an avalanche of shrill news when the IG’s report on the FBI’s handling of emailgate is released. Best I can tell, the IG suffers from the same preening self regard that Comey did. He will release a report that will impugn the FBI and fuel the GOP campaign to (a) discredit anyone who testifies against Trump and (b) purge the agency of anyone without sufficient fealty to Dear Leader. The conduct of the New York office of the FBI won’t be addressed in the report.
Spanky
A little background on Great Mills. It’s the high school in the southern part of St. Marys that covers Patuxent NAS and surrounding areas. Like most of Southern MD, it’s quite rural once you get beyond the strip shopping centers of Lexington Park, a pretty typical military base town. Trump carried St. Marys County as well as the rest of Southern MD. It’s a pretty Confederate area despite the growing number of us newcomers and transients.
There are a number of us Juicers in Southern MD. Elmo and Patricia Kayden I think both live in Charles Co. I think lowtechcyclist is also around here somewhere, and I know there are at least two others whose nyms escape me right now.
Steeplejack (phone)
In more pleasant news, spring equinox right now.
Happy hedgehog.
Kathleen
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady):Cue NPR
series of interviews with economically anxious whie pipe bombers
Steeplejack (phone)
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
¿Por qué no los tres?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Steeplejack (phone): I can just see him blundering around his Senate office suite, bellowing “Where’s my bullhorn?!”
rikyrah
Must have been a regular firearm.
Calouste
@Immanentize: Problem with all these old folks is that the chance one of them dies at an inopportune moment is decidedly nonzero. Like the guy the shitgibbon put in charge of the GSA to block access to the campaign emails. Oops.
J R in WV
@tobie:
Actually, there are other ways to stop bad guys with guns – best one is to take their guns away ASAP, before the go to school and start killing!
So your RWNJ congressman is lying straight out!
tobie
@J R in WV: Oh boy did he lie. He also claimed that the only verified collusion between Russia and a US politician was that between the HRC campaign and the Russian sources hired for Steele’s dossier. The whole townhall was a doozy. One good thing, though: there were critical voices in the tele-town hall, and several people were extremely worried about how the repeal of environmental regulations would affect the health of the Chesapeake Cay. So all politics are local and protecting the bay is clearly an issue that cuts across party lines on the Eastern Shore.
NorthLeft12
@Stacy:
I am assuming by “engaged” it means “was shot”. If so, all the gun humpers [led by the Deadbeat in Chief] will identify this as a glorious turning point in the school shooter war.
I watched a CBC report that followed a number of teachers that were training how to defend their class with guns of course. I thought it was in Virginia. It was scary to say the least.
VeniceRiley
Not familiar with the area, but did I just read they were making parents drive 15 miles to another school to pick up their kids? That seems exceedingly stupid! Frantic parents, shaking, on the road for that many miles? Nevermind any poor or disabled parents. I mean, c’mon! Whose bright idea was that? Is there no other suitable place?
Spanky
@VeniceRiley:
No.
LAO
@tobie: @Immanentize: @Barbara: Olsen is out.
ETA:
sukabi
@tobie: shot, it means he was shot.
Spanky
Latest version of events from WaPo:
gvg
quick google to make sure Olsen was who I thought he was turns up an op ed he wrote published yesterday criticizing the Trump administration for not defending a key law for fighting terrorisim
another link said his partner had already confirmed Olsen won’t be joining Trump’s team.
Olsen is the conservative who argued for gay marriage before the California Supreme court and got the ban over turned. He is a rare conservative with brains IMO.
Roger Moore
@delk:
That statement is very disturbing. Apart from Loesch nearly dislocating her shoulders nailing herself to the cross, the whole thing about “voluntarily enter into a fellowship” is creepy as fuck. That “fellowship” language is the way Christianists talk about churches, so she’s seriously implying that her NRA membership is equivalent to religious belief. I’ve talked about the NRA being the church of Moloch, but it’s really scary to hear an actual member talking about it in religious terms.
d58826
@Butch: Won’t be long before the weather forecast will include percent change of rain and percent chance of school shooting. I think the NRA plan is to make school shootings so common that they won’t even make the evening news. In fact they will only report on the day’s that one has not happened.
Spanky
More from the WaPo article:
catclub
@cosima:
That depends. Is the bomber white?
Spanky
Update:
Jager
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): I heard the report this morning too, their defense lawyer claims they were essentially “just kind of shooting the shit about it”
JerryRich
@Nicole: The late Patrick Macnee played secret agent John Steed in The
Avengers for years. Because of his experiences in WWII, he refused to carry a gun on the show.
cosima
@catclub: I’m going to put that at 80% odds.
chopper
wow, a “not” ref. really hitting these cultural touchstones at the height of their popularity aren’t we.