To paraphrase Steve M, this country belongs to the gun nuts; we’re just sheltering in place in it. Because they are fanatically committed to a single issue and backed by a deep-pocketed manufacturers’ lobbying group, the gun nuts will force their will on the rest of us until, inevitably, some lunatic commits a mass shooting so devastating that the sensible gun control majority become fanatics on the issue ourselves. We now know 20 dead first graders won’t be enough.
But rather than giving in to despair, we should celebrate every small victory against the ammosexuals, even if it only occurs because they make such asses of themselves in public that they are forced to change tactics to avoid continued backlash. That’s what happened when a coalition of morons began a campaign to visit chain restaurants in Texas with military style assault rifles, which naturally scared the shit out of customers.
At first, the cowardly bullies in the gun nut organizations tried to intimidate anyone who pushed back, subtly and overtly threatening gun control advocates. They even stalked and harassed regular citizens who weren’t part of any gun control group but had just called the cops because they were alarmed by the sight of heavily armed yahoos converging on their location.
The push has been a PR disaster. On Monday, Chipotle became the latest chain to tell the gun nuts to leave the hardware at home. And apparently, even skulls made of 100% granite can be penetrated by a clue because Open Carry Texas and affiliated muzzle-stroker groups issued a statement in response:
Looking back, it has become clear that there is one area in which we have gotten the most resistance and suffered the largest setbacks: open carry of long arms into private businesses. This is not a new phenomenon. Early on, because of our efforts, the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission (TABC) sent a message to all TABC licensees warning them about allowing our members to open carry into their businesses. This resulted in places like Smashburger asking us to leave our guns at home. Since then, Starbucks, Wendy’s, Jack In The Box, Applebees and most recently, Chipotle have come out asking we not carry our firearms into their establishments.
Whereas, our mission is to get open carry of handguns passed in Texas, we must once again adjust in a way that shines a positive light on our efforts, our members, and our respective organizations. We have decided the prudent path, to further our goals, is to immediately cease taking long guns into corporate businesses unless invited.
The statement wraps up with “rah-rah we’re winning” language, but on this campaign at least, they’ve tucked their tails between their legs and slunk off the stage. It’s a small victory, but we should savor it.
UPDATE: There was a horrific mass shooting at UCSB last night. A lunatic armed with a semi-automatic handgun allegedly posted a misogynistic tirade on YouTube before hunting down and shooting women on campus. Seven dead (including the gunman) and seven more injured. Nothing to see here. Move along.
Buffalo Rude
“Ammosexual” is so becoming a part of my everyday lexicon.
Baud
That’s not true. The “rest of us” have voluntarily submitted to their will because we apparently have other priorities.
The Moar You Know
How timely. Seven dead in Santa Barbara this morning. The foaming-mouth brigade is yukking it up about how it couldn’t have happened since California doesn’t allow people to carry weapons in public. Har har har.
While they are laughing, the bodies of seven college students are cooling in the morgue fridge, and doctors are frantically trying to save the lives of those who weren’t killed immediately.
No talk of gun control. I guess this is just part of watering the tree of liberty, or some stupid shit like that.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: Good point.
eric
Here is what i really dont get. these folks live in red states away from the blahs, so what are they all afraid of? other white gun nuts? the invasion of the brown horde from Mexico, who, after sneaking into the country want to get into a gun battle? these are people that fail to understand that their putative political allies are keeping them economically trapped and not the dark-skinned other.
GregB
That human meat-loaf shooting the mothers against guns target is such a hero and a tough guy.
Ash Can
It’s definitely a good thing that the people in Texas will apparently be less terrorized when they go out for a bite to eat. And “ammosexuals” needs to be framed and hung in a museum to be admired for generations to come. But, in general, I have to say again that I much prefer the gun-clingers to carry their weapons openly, so that I know who, and where, to avoid and keep my family clear of.
amk
commerce class strikes. after enabling these critters. karma.
Comrade Dread
No, just the periodic offering of the innocent to Molech.
As long as it’s always someone else’s child, nobody gives a damn.
Cassidy
@eric: There is a whole mythology to it starting with “bug out bags”, “SHTF weapons”, and a fevered imagination. After that it settles into two major strains: the preppers and the insurrectionists. There is a lot of overlap, but the primary reason for their hoarding is what separates them.
Mudge
Unless invited? I wonder which chain restaurant will be first to invite these psychopaths?
Cassidy
@Comrade Dread: Shit, even when it’s their own kids they don’t give a damn. Just an accident and god’ hands and all that.
Villago Delenda Est
I wish these guys would at least show some balls and wear codpieces.
Oh, wait…that would be false advertising.
Davis X. Machina
@The Moar You Know: Freedom isn’t free. Seven martyrs for the cause.
While it is traditional for martyrs to volunteer to stand to witness for their faith, sometimes you just have to take conscripts, that’s just a small-minded cavil, now isn’t it?
Chris
@eric:
UN black helicopter squadrons, laying the groundwork for their takeover through FEMA through strategic cattle mutilation.
GregB
@eric:
Eric, a little trip over to Wikipedia shows your assumption is off the mark.
Mustang Bobby
@Villago Delenda Est: That’s a corollary to the bumper sticker I’ve seen: “Nice AK-47; Sorry about your d*ck.”
KG
@eric: the invading southern brown horde of wildings, the descendants of former slaves (being that this is a confederate state after all), and probably all the other foreign invaders as well. Plus, they’re probably the type to see the 10:00 news and think it is an accurate representation of their own (gated) community
Tokyokie
“Ammosexuals” is perfect, because it’s a reminder of the sexual deviance that is at the root of gun love. Seriously, any of these “open carry” perverts who not only feel compelled to publicly display their penile substitutes but, in the case of long arms, fondle them, is in dire need of psychiatric care and needs another firearm about as much as a recovering alcoholic needs a bottle of scotch.
MattF
‘Muzzlestroker’ makes my day. Happy holiday, btw.
Villago Delenda Est
@Davis X. Machina:
Seven more sacrifices for Moloch and Mammon.
Who says that old time religion is dead?
Davis X. Machina
@eric: They’re not really afraid, rather the contrary, they live in hope — the hope that someday they’ll get to shoot someone, legitimately, without legal sanction.
At that point they’d become someone, someone with control and agency and power over life and death, instead of a schlub with a boss, and bills, and a bad transmission, like, say, me.
If that someone were to be one of the lesser breeds without the law, that’d be lagniappe.
This is why they and their fellow-travelers tend to love wars so much. Who wants to live a existence of meaningless getting, gaining and commuting when they can be part, however small, of a grand crusade against the forces of evil? Warrior on the Home Front… or aisle six in Home Depot?
gogol's wife
I’m beyond depressed. If Sandy Hook didn’t do it, what can? It just seems to have gotten worse since then.
Villago Delenda Est
@KG: Nat Turner lives…and he’s asking “Where are the white women at?”
Certified Mutant Enemy
@Davis X. Machina:
They’re not really afraid, rather the contrary, they live in hope — the hope that someday they’ll get to shoot someone, legitimately, without legal sanction.
THIS.
Baud
@eric:
@Chris:
The Bureau of Land Management is like a modern day Genghis Khan. When the BLM horde comes after your village, you’ll be wishing your dick were small enough to want a big gun.
dp
@Buffalo Rude: Best neologism ever.
Villago Delenda Est
@Baud:
Or the Zulu bearing down on Rorke’s Drift.
Chris
@Davis X. Machina:
Well said.
I do also find it funny that so many of these warriors prefer to fight “the war on the home front” (or, you know, sit around in gun clubs and militia campouts talking about all the things they totally WILL do WHEN war comes on the home front) than actually sign up for a real war.
Baud
@dp:
Yep.
c u n d gulag
Texas pro-gun organization asks its ammosexual members to stop carrying weapons into restaurants because it’s not helping their open-carry cause, but hurting it?
D’OH!
REALLY?
All y’all think?
WHODATHUNKIT! – that open-carry gun groups sending swarms of cowardly tiny-peckered armed morons into local restaurants might scare and offend diners who are out trying to enjoy a meal with their families!!!
“TEH STOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOPID!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
It burns with the heat of a trillion billion million thousand hundred suns!
Ash Can
@gogol’s wife: What would do it would be a group of these morons shooting up a Goldman Sachs board meeting or a Koch Brothers political strategy confab. If that ever happened you’d see the Second Amendment overhauled — if not flushed outright — before you could say “Supreme Court activism.”
Villago Delenda Est
@c u n d gulag:
+1!
Bobby Thomson
@eric:
I seem to recall a political candidate saying that back in 2008.
KG
@Chris: because it’s not a real war with armies and discipline and battle plans that they want. They want an old west (movie version) cattle war where they can go around shooting others under the pretense of a fair fight or because blacks, Chinese, Irishmen, and Indians don’t count towards murder
Villago Delenda Est
@Chris:
Don’t wanna be an Airborne Ranger
I’ll take a safe job in the rear
You can have your guts and danger
I’ll stay back and guard the beer
eric
@Davis X. Machina: I think this is it…..
schrodinger's cat
I had an interesting conversation with an Indian one percenter and she was blaming socialism for all of India’s ills, she includes feminists and the environmentalists among the socialists.
Do all the wingnuts exchange talking points?
Gordon, The Big Express Engine
O/T but any knowledgable plumbers here? We have three toilets in the house. The one down lost the power of the flush for a few weeks while the two up were working fine. We got a really long snake from the hardware store and that didn’t seem to solve the problem. Problem eventually went away but then after about 2 weeks time, one of the upstairs ones started exhibiting the same problem. The other two including the downstairs one work fine. Good powerful flushes. Guy I work with says intake vents on our roof that provide the flush power must be clogged up. Has anyone heard of this?
The day the downstairs one started working normally again was also the day we had our a/c tuned up which included replacement of the large filters that are in the attic furnaces (we don’t have the ones that are in the wall). Is it possible this airflow concept is correct and somehow this was tied into our a/c system? Or just a coincidence?
Gian
I graduated UCSB
Went there for a tour with my niece a year and a half ago. She went somewhere else. That was the town where a very Republican classmate of mine paid a homeless guy for guitar lessons.
Someone with body armor and a video game arsenal has to storm the gun worship cathedral and rack up a three digit body count before things change
Baud
@Gordon, The Big Express Engine:
I suggest shooting it. I hear guns solve anything.
Baud
@schrodinger’s cat:
Pretty much.
gnomedad
How about a “Friendly Fire” restaurant chain where these clowns are invited to bring their hardware and the rest of us can steer clear? Maybe Darwin will have his little say from time to time.
Jennifer
Some time back, I had an idea that would completely solve the issue of open-carry in business establishments (at the least) while also trolling the whole gun nut movement. If you’ve seen me post it roy’s or TBogg’s please forgive the repetition.
The idea is: d1ldoguns. That is, guns that look like d1ldos. You can imagine how business owners and managers would react to these; as soon as customers started complaining that they didn’t want their children exposed to big black phallic replicas, they would ask those carrying them to leave. Then there would be a world-class opportunity for trolling: “I’m not hurting anyone – I just feel safer if I have my d1ldogun with me at all times.” “The second amendment says I have a RIGHT to keep and bear arms – it doesn’t say my gun can’t look like a fake penis!” and so on and so forth.
Advantages:
1) It graphically connects guns to the reason why most of those who want to carry them everywhere want to carry them.
2) Imagine the knots GOP politicians will tie themselves into trying to pass legislation that outlaws only firearms that look like penises. This after decades of arguing that it’s no big deal that gun manufacturers are making guns to look like assault weapons.
3) Wayne LaPierre. Picture him standing in front of a big crowd with a huge black dick in his hands, screeching about how those hands will have to be cold and dead before anyone will ever pry that big black dick from them.
I’m sure there’s opportunity for much, much more mischief with d1ldoguns. The problem is, no one currently makes them, which actually surprised me a great deal. No guns that look like d1ldos, but there ARE d1ldos that look like guns. Yeah. America! Fuck Yeah!
jonas
@schrodinger’s cat: Reminds me of a conversation I had with an Indian 1%-er one time where she was going off on how America should be ashamed of its horrible legacy of racism and segregation. Not that I disagreed per se, but coming from a person whose own country gave us the term “caste,” the chutzpah was quite remarkable.
gnomedad
“Hi, welcome to ‘Friendly Fire’! Shooting or non-shooting?”
Gordon, The Big Express Engine
@schrodinger’s cat: yes. I have an old high school friend who is hardcore catholic. Big pro life guy. Big. Anyway he has adopted every single other wingnut view as gospel whether it be guns, climate change, taxes, the horrors of big government etc. my only conclusion is that he has sealed himself in the right wing noise machine and people he trusts for info that completely agree with him on his big issue are all pumping the right wing party line on all the other issues.
Early on Election Day he was shocked and dismayed to see that the online trading sites had Obama as a solid favorite to be re-elected. What do they know that I don’t he wondered? I told him he shouldn’t be surprised because all of the analytics guys like Nate Silver have had O ahead the whole time. He then dismissed Nate Silver as “liberal fairy tale.” I talked a lot of trash to him later that night….
nancydarling
@Mustang Bobby:
I wish I had the guts to put that on my Ranger. Alas, my “I heart Obamacare” was enough to provoke someone into keying my tailgate pretty badly in the Wallyworld parking lot. I’m sure the above would result in tire slashing—all 4 tires.
gbear
@gogol’s wife:
FAIRFAX, VA—National Rifle Association Executive Vice President and CEO Wayne LaPierre said Monday that somewhere around 1,000 kids would have to die in a school shooting in order for the organization to reconsider their longstanding opposition to gun control.
Ammosexuals is so full of win (even though this whole gun situation is so full of lose).
Howlin Wolfe
@eric: the blahs are as near as their nearest propaganda outlet.
Tiny Tim
Oh they love the idea of war but none of them actually sign up. Too scary.
A college friend of mine fortunately channeled all of that into reinactment. That shit is totally nuts, but it’s healthier than being a gun fetishist.
Citizen_X
Yeah, I think I’ll put my money on you guys continuing to show your asses again and again, instead.
MattF
@gbear: That’s like “machine-gun nests attacked by human waves of first-graders.” I’m a little surprised that he’d actually specify a number that might cause a problem.
KG
@Gordon, The Big Express Engine: it’s all positive reenforcement within the wingularity. There is no room for dissent (unless it’s from the right, because that makes a good point) within the wingularity. But there aren’t official talking points, just cues they take from a handful of leader types
Ash Can
@gbear: He’s full of shit. If that were ever to happen he’d immediately move the goalposts a half a mile away and pound the table calling for MOAR GUNZ. Only a roomful of major shareholders/corporate officers/GOP political leaders getting blown away would bring about change.
Frankensteinbeck
No. That has not a damn thing to do with it. Like almost everything else in our political sphere, nothing will be done until the racist GOP loses enough power it can’t blockade the government. Global warming, energy policy, gun control, labor support, civil rights for women and minorities, veterans’ support, trimming the security state, pulling back on the war on drugs, investments in infrastructure, investments in science, investments in education, and non-suicidal economic policy – everything, everything, is a victim of Cleek’s Law. It has been since Reagan, but when a black man became president they knew their world was ending and there could be no compromise, ever, on anything. Gun rights are seen as a liberal/conservative divide, so right now conservatives will literally shoot themselves in the face rather than take one step in the right direction.
maya
@Gordon, The Big Express Engine: Just toss a cherry bomb or two into the offending one-holer. That’ll clear up its sinuses. But, seriously, does sound like a vent problem. Squirrels are known to take up residence in them if not screened on top.
Culture of Truth
@Davis X. Machina: Exactly. That’s why the GOP likes to remind everyone that they are the party that brought you 9/11, a thrilling and exicting time for these guys.
schrodinger's cat
Short blog post from India with a photo.
schrodinger's cat
@jonas: Blinders, she has them.
schrodinger's cat
@Baud: Indian 1% er lives and works in India, but she was regurgitating the GOP talking points. It was very strange.
Roger Moore
@MattF: @Ash Can:
You need to check the source for that quote: it’s The Onion.
Villago Delenda Est
@MattF: @Ash Can: Guys, guys. gbear’s link is to The Onion
Not that LaPierre isn’t sociopathic enough to think in those terms, mind you.
ruemara
Is it too much hope that they’re sitting on their ordinance and it explodes?
Chris
@schrodinger’s cat:
Well, Rupert Murdoch runs an international empire. Does he own anything in India?
Higgs Boson's Mate
Take a heady dose of gauzy myths; Mountain Men, The gun that won the West, God made men, but Sam Colt made them equal. Combine that with decades of Republican cultivation of hatred, fear, ignorance, and division and you get the ammosexual movement.
The ammosexuals will never change, no matter how many innocents die, because they are unable to conceive of any other way to exert some control in a world that they find frightening and incomprehensible.
MattF
@Roger Moore: @Villago Delenda Est: Poe’s Law strikes again.
Frankensteinbeck
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
And while their numbers are small and shrinking, the rest of the conservative movement fanatically has their back. Us vs. Them.
I think gun control may actually be the perfect showcase of Cleek’s Law. Even most conservatives support small increases in gun control – in theory. Any Republican official who votes for such increases will be hounded out of office by a screaming mob. Never making common cause with liberals and Obama is their highest priority.
EDIT – Man, this is depressing. The insanity that I’ve seen in the last five years has shocked me right to my core. Not partisan politics, but half of America going absolutely bugfuck crazy.
gbear
@MattF: @Ash Can: Sorry for the confusion. Onion links tend to pack more punch if you don’t reveal the source right off the bat. I thought it was one of the better comments on Sandy Hook.
@ruemara: I’m really surprised that there hasn’t been a house or garage fire at the home of one of these gun hoarders where a stash of ammo hasn’t blown up spectacularly. I have to admit I would enjoy watching a video of such an event, as long as innocent neighbors and firefighters weren’t affected.
SatanicPanic
Idiots are going to be running their mouths about Santa Barbara- no guns in California blah blah blah- but the dude was shooting from a car. Like you’re really gonna hit some dude in a moving car. It’s like how they argue- “well if you ban guns, people will use bombs” as if that isn’t self refuting. No shit stupid, so when everyone is armed with guns, people will start planting bombs and we’re no better off than we were. (this of course, is taking their argument at face value, which is stupid in its own right, so stupid me)
ETA- I am pissed off this morning. Fucking misogynist gun nuts.
schrodinger's cat
@Chris: I am not sure. I haven’t watched much TV except for the election results. There are too many channels in too many languages.
NotMax
Note that it is only long guns they are talking about. The Dirty Harry wanna-bes will still be out there.
Ruckus
@ruemara:
I like the Happy Shooters eatery. Two foot thick concrete walls, no windows, buffet style behind bullet proof glass, everyone has to be locked and loaded. Front door locks whenever there is a full house, sound system comes up with the sound of gunfire…. I think you can see where this leads to. They get to fondle and shoot their weapons and no one but them gets dead. I’ll bet about half of them are found hiding under the tables, pants unsurprisingly wet.
scav
A belief in Guns, like a belief in God, give a cheap and easy belief in one personally being in control in a world that is likewise under control. The devout belief in simplistic economic theories works the same way: the illusion of simple levers that invariably work to produce ideal outcomes. God is also the large magic carpet that hides all the messy outcomes that might otherwise discombobulate the general worldview.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Frankensteinbeck:
Liberals are appalled by the mass shootings and anything that fucks with liberals is doubleplusgood in Republican eyes. As for the dead, that ol’ Tree of Liberty needs to be watered with the blood of anyone but them, doesn’t it? .
SatanicPanic
@gbear: It happens. I seem to remember a house a few years ago in San Diego county where the man had stashed so many explosives and chemical weapons they just had to blow it up because it was too dangerous to decontaminate.
MattF
OT, but here’s a death-penalty Onion link:
http://www.theonion.com/video/ohio-replaces-lethal-injection-with-humane-new-hea,36077/
@Ruckus: All sorts of possibilities.
Amir Khalid
@Cassidy:
I’ve seen some of this on YouTube. It gets creepy for me when they use the language to describe their everyday life in the real world. These guys sound like they yearn for the day when civilisation collapses, and they get to use their skills and preparation to become frontiersmen like Natty Bumppo.
Ash Can
@Roger Moore: Lol! Poe’s Law strikes again! Thanks for the info.
Cassidy
@Amir Khalid: Yeah. I’ve talked to some of them before. The insurrectionists piss me off because they’re nothing more than chickenshit coward playing dress up, but there are a lot of them in condensed areas. Fortunately, they don’t have the will to actually start a fight. The preppers are creepy as fuck sometimes and laughably sad the other times. The “techniques” and stuff they yammer on about makes zero sense at times.
debg
@Gian: I got my PhD in history there in 1999, and lived in Isla Vista for a while. Haven’t been back to visit. IV, as it’s known, had the highest population density of the county. So this madman had a target-rich environment in which to work.
Ash Can
@SatanicPanic: Funny you should use the word “misogynist” — the Sydney Morning Herald is reporting a very ugly turn in the investigation of the UCSB shootings. It would not be a misuse of the term “trigger warning” to apply it to the very disturbing video included in the SMH article, which I did not watch myself but read about. (H/t LGF commenters)
Villago Delenda Est
Just had a thought…do Smith & Wesson or Remington conduct background checks on their employees for their firearms plants? For their security guards? Do they look for signs of mental illness from these people who are all around heat being made and being used to protect say the boards of directors from disgruntled customers who are armed?
Because it may very well take an armed assault on an officer or board member of a merchant of death before suddenly it’s not just an abstraction to them, but in their face where they cannot possibly ignore it any longer.
scav
@Ruckus: Can we have an attached upscale bistro room where the hedge fund banker guys foregather to shoot all they eat? One) the vision of the besuited and possibly be-aperitiefed suddenly surrounded by Kobe Steaks (Bundy-bred, bied sûr) on the hoof is inherently amusing, B) there is a hope of a guy ripping off his pinstriped three piece to reveal an spandex matador outfit; C) bulls have be fighting back rather well recently; and finally D) the comrades in arms and votes nearby might get involved in second-order crossfire if someone in the Bistro actually does manage to kill what he eats.
Davis X. Machina
@Villago Delenda Est: Employee background checks? I would expect them to. Of a very obtrusive kind. That’s business.
Coercion can only be performed by the state. No businessman, no corporation, no one in pursuit of profit, can coerce anyone.
They’re on a mission from God.
ice weasel
@Ash Can:
And in this, you see why the wealthy push back so hard against class war memes. That the war is over isn’t even important. The last thing you want to do is excite the dumb rubes with guns because if they suddenly twigged that their real enemies aren’t mythological welfare queens and job stealing immigrants, if that happened, the blood letting would be tremendous. Actually convince some of their idiots that in fact, the BLM isn’t the scariest thing on the planet but Goldman Sachs is, yeah, open carry would be over in days and the term “gated community” would come to mean something much more industrial.
Ruckus
@scav:
This.
Many humans like real simple, don’t have to think about it answers. Especially to complex questions that make your brain have to actually exercise. Saw a cartoon the other day, kid in school, math problem, comes up with a smart ass answer rather than X=5. Most of these things you mention are not that difficult but they require a bit of info/history, logic, and some effort. Many people are not willing to go that far, only a few are not capable.
Villago Delenda Est
@Ash Can: This guy really is off his rocker. This entire spiel is just too Hollywood fantasy over the top to be real…but is it real?. If this is indeed the guy, well, wow.
Villago Delenda Est
@Davis X. Machina: Their God is Mammon.
Ash Can
And according to the same alert commenter at LGF, who has a far stronger stomach than I do and wades into places on the Internet that I never would, the UCSB perp was a member of a misogynistic online forum (hell no, I’m not giving any links) that had a message up this morning notifying its members that the site was “about to get a massive amount of press,” and explaining why.
Villago Delenda Est
But…I have a black BMW! That should have been a chick magnet! It can’t be me that’s wrong…it must be the sluts! Yeah, that’s it!
Ash Can
Gah. I’m going to turn off the computer now and go out and do fun stuff in this beautiful weather. I’ve had enough ugliness for one day.
Ruckus
@scav:
Go for it.
Maybe eating at the Hungry Shooter(tm!) should be a part of the final to receive a MustBeAsshole degree, or a hedge/vulture fund business license. Might change the culture of our current upper crust business class. Anyone left standing would be one lucky bastard and still couldn’t think any more of themselves.
Elizabelle
@The Moar You Know:
LA Times still not identifying the shooter, although foreign outlets are.
From the video:
On the six-minute video, he talks about feeling alienated and rejected by women.
I guess he skipped killing the girls in the sorority house? Denied admittance, or decided odds were not in his favor?
I want to know where and how this guy got the gun.
Davis X. Machina
Vassalboro weighs opinions on ‘exploding targets’
Many residents at a hearing describe the recreational shooting as loud and destructive, but one proponent says, ‘To see trees blow up is pretty fun.’
By Jesse Scardina
Morning Sentinel
VASSALBORO — About 30 people turned out for a public hearing on the location and size of “exploding targets” for shooting practice, a pastime that has led to complaints from several residents about the loud noise caused by the use of the targets.
The ordinance would limit the power of the exploding target, which is made of a combination of ammonium nitrate and aluminum powder. When packed inside an object, the material explodes on impact from a high-speed projectile, such as a rifle shot.
—
While defending the practice of shooting at explosive targets, Cote admitted that he and friends do go overboard from time to time.
“I’m not saying it’s not excessively loud; not saying that one bit,” he said. “We get excessive sometimes, just like anybody else.”
I know I get excessive sometimes, just like anybody else….
scav
Gonna be a good one. At least three dead in a shooting at the Brussel’s Jewish Museum. Ahhh for this post-racist, post-mysogynist, post-etc world we’ve perfected.
Citizen_X
@Elizabelle: Holy crap, what a little monster. I couldn’t watch much of the video before getting getting sickened by his whining rich-brat psychosis.
Phantom 309
@SatanicPanic: “misogynist gun nuts” = redundant.
Chris
@Frankensteinbeck:
This is why I find talking to conservatives utterly useless. Plenty of them do think for themselves and come up with ideas that aren’t necessarily antiliberal; I once had one of them, when asked “what would YOU do about this economy?” spell out a bunch of ideas that were almost exactly the Obama stimulus. But it doesn’t matter, because 90% of them will never vote on “their” ideas anyway once they find out that it’s also Obama’s or whoever is in power.
And man do I agree about watching half the country go utterly mad in the last five years – although the more I read about the era, the more I feel that I would’ve felt the same way (probably worse) in the sixties and seventies during the original descent into conservatism. Much of this country’s been mad for a long, long time. We just keep pushing the envelope further and further.
Villago Delenda Est
@Citizen_X: It’s all about HIM! Everything! The universe revolves about him, in all his actually very attractiveness (except for the ugly neediness). Anyone who dares to challenge that by not “adoring” him must be punished! One wonders if he’s got an autographed by the author copy of Atlas Shrugged.
Another case of affluenza, you reckon?
Botsplainer
@Gordon, The Big Express Engine:
It could be, but if that was the problem, it wouldn’t have spontaneously improved.
Depends on how far through you snaked, and where each drain joins the system. My guess is that you didn’t snake far enough, and you’ve got a plug of toys, feminine products, fabric, paper towels or something similar traipsing down the gray line.
chopper
@The Moar You Know:
of course! with the blood of second graders and college students, just as the founders intended.
Chris
@ice weasel:
On the other hand, exciting the dumb rubes with guns against the other side of the class war, any group representing the disenfranchised and threatening the wealthy’s right to do as they will, that’s great for business. Or so elites have thought ever since mass politics became a thing.
It comes back to bite them in the ass from time to time, but they never seem to learn. Those disenfranchised are just so scary.
Elizabelle
@Citizen_X:
Haven’t watched the video, but there’s going to be a sad and sick backstory on this one.
Never been kissed, couldn’t get girls to pay any attention to him? Sounds like a kid who could not cope or relate to others.
Since the parent in this case was not annihilated (to our knowledge so far, a la Nancy Lanza), I wonder what we will hear in time of the parenting challenges and warning signs missed.
So we have an alienated kid.
But a kid with a gun. Who decided to use it.
scav
@chopper: Well, all those sluts thought they had the liberty to not let him apply the sacred water of his other Liberty Tree internally, so he showed them!
Frankensteinbeck
@Cassidy:
The insurrectionists had their moment. Their mythos is based on the idea that when the great symbolic rallying cry event happens, Real Americans will rise up everywhere to support their revolution. The Bundy Ranch situation was exactly the event they’ve always dreamed of, an armed standoff against the government praised nationally in conservative media. No revolution.
@ice weasel:
I don’t think there’s any plan to it. They have bloated egos and want to live in a bubble where everyone tells them they’re Galtian geniuses. They’re offended that we don’t understand how much better they are than us. That’s it.
Citizen_X
@Villago Delenda Est:
Probably, but it’s damn sure a homicidal case of misogyny.
Larry
@NotMax:
Exactly. They’re not telling their members to respect the private-property rights of the business owners and the safety of their patrons; they’re telling them to stop being so obvious with their disrespect. I don’t call that backing down.
trollhattan
@gbear:
Not the least ashamed to admit I thought the lede was real. We’re at the point parody and reality can’t be prised apart.
trollhattan
@Larry:
“We won’t stop until we can open-carry RPGs.”
“Psst, mutter-mutter-mutter.”
“Why are they trying to take our RPGs?”
And, scene.
Botsplainer
@Frankensteinbeck:
I’m convinced that the Waco and Ruby Ridge narratives got so entrenched because of the absence of organized pushback. No Internet, no Fairness Doctrine, so the radio hosts and direct mailers go to run their puke through a funnel at the mentally vulnerable demographic.
RandomMonster
Ammosexual and muzzle-stroker FTFW
Betty, what are you doing writing for this two-bit blog…
raven
I’ll let you know when Pat Lang weighs in on you fuckers and your gun laws. Oh wait, you can just jump to his blog from here.
raven
I’ll let you know when Pat Lang weighs in on you fuckers and your gun laws. Oh wait, you can just jump to his blog from here.
Cassidy
@Frankensteinbeck: I don’t think they’re done yet. Someone will finally start things off. It’ll be out down within a couple layers of LE response, but someone will make a real try. Unfortunately, the only way we’ll get significant gun control laws is when they do and kill a bunch of people.
Elizabelle
@Ash Can:
OK. I watched the Elliot Rodger Retribution video in full. And rather than chilling, it seemed like a parody. A bad, bad demo for a grade Z movie role. It’s surreal to hear what’s coming out of the kid’s mouth, in a calm tone, about the rot of loneliness, while he’s sitting in a nice car at sunset with palm trees in the background.
Made me wonder if video was made as a fantasy, someone teased him about it, and that set off the shooting.
AND — the gun nutz have seized on this liberal scion of Hollywood being the shooter. They’re wondering why the media is covering up his name and family affiliation.
Here’s one blogpost: A mass murderer made in Hollywood
which has the usual idiot commenters. One posts that 97% of mass shooters are Democrats. If we ban Democrats from having guns, we won’t have any more mass shootings.
Uh huh.
I see that Glenn Beck’s The Blaze has picked up the story too; didn’t click …
SiubhanDuinne
@Villago Delenda Est:
In enterprise of martial kind,
When there was any fighting,
He led his regiment from behind —
He found it less exciting.
But when away his regiment ran
His place was in the fore-oh!
That celebrated, cultivated, underrated nobleman,
The Duke of Plaza-Toro!
(and two additional verses in the same vein)
someofparts
Well hells bells, according to some otherwise bright, righteous liberal guy bloggers that I even used to bookmark, we ladies need to STFU about feminism because our concerns are trivial (being as we’re gals, don’t ya know). Yeah, nobody singles us out anymore to gun down.
Elizabelle
@RandomMonster:
I know.
Fifty times the talent and insight of McMeghan.
In a just world, Betty C would have her Vermont summer home and Florida too.
SiubhanDuinne
@gbear:
You know, I actually believed that for a brief moment. It sounds exactly like something he would “reasonably” say.
Villago Delenda Est
@Larry: Why does anyone ever assume that these assholes respect the rights of others? They don’t. They’re the center of the fucking universe. Anything that restricts any of their actions is oppression by socialist totalitarian assholes. They’re for freedumb!
GregB
@Elizabelle:
At least that is a modest step forward on the concept of gun control.
raven
@Villago Delenda Est: So we go from militia guys to members of the military other than grunts huh?
Botsplainer
@Cassidy:
It’ll be in Michigan, Wisconsin or North Carolina.
? Martin
@Elizabelle:
The sorority/fraternity houses are in Isla Vista.
I really, really don’t like Isla Vista. I know too many students that have died there coming home drunk from parties, etc. I think it’s cool that there’s a student community, but it’s too much, too big, too concentrated. It’s a big challenge for the university – they’re tired of this shit as if anything at all happens in that part of the state, it’ll happen in Isla Vista.
I’m not trying to blame the victims here. I’m just tired of seeing headlines out of Isla Vista.
Baud
@RandomMonster:
And the piano sounds like a carnival
And the microphone smells like a beer
And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar
And say “Man what are you doing here?”
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Elizabelle:
And if you think any of that solves the problem of loneliness you’re deluded. I don’t find his anger at the world hard to understand at all. Granted, that’s one of the reasons it should be hard to obtain a gun but I think a lot of people around here should think a lot harder before they mock this guy’s distress.
Frankensteinbeck
@Cassidy:
Won’t make the slightest bit of difference. The only way we’ll get significant gun control laws is if the Right’s existential freakout ends, or Democrats gain enough control that the freakout doesn’t matter. Liberals are for gun control, conservatives are against it. That’s all that matters right now, not facts of any strength.
? Martin
Contrary to what the gun nuts say about California, we have a very simple rule: if you see someone with a gun who isn’t a police officer, you call 911 – full stop. You don’t second guess whether they are a responsible citizen bringing their AR-15 to Starbucks to defend themselves from the hoards of zombie girl scouts, or whether they are some sociopath. Gun = 911. Period.
Cassidy
@Frankensteinbeck: I think it will if they start a full blown rebellion.
raven
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): Explain to me how it matters what some people on this blog do?
trollhattan
@Frankensteinbeck:
There is no problem, challenge or obstacle that can’t be cured by “moar gunz.”
It must be comforting to go through life so thunderously simple-minded.
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
His distress was probably the same as that of the last mass murderer at UCSB: paranoid schizophrenia that he was able to hide from his family. But I’ll reserve my sympathy for the families of the dead right now before I wring my hands about his murderous “distress.”
ruemara
@Ruckus: I like your ideas & would like to contribute to your backscatter.
pseudonymous in nc
NRA + MRA = this.
Wasn’t there that survey of MRA-types on Reddit that showed how half of them were under 20 and 80% under 25?
Frankensteinbeck
@Cassidy:
Not going to happen, and the Bundy ranch situation proved it. They have a handful of tiny militias, a few hundred, maybe a couple of thousand people who all hate each other and refuse to organize as a matter of principle. The teeming millions of wingnuts screaming for secession are chickenhawks, a large proportion of them disabled, who want someone else to revolt for them.
Elizabelle
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
I don’t doubt that the kid was lonely. I am not mocking the kid’s distress, but saying his affect is so odd that one could think the video was a parody.
No one is saying wealth protects one from loneliness. It can be isolating, too. As can poverty, or any other human condition if one cannot reach out to and feel supported and accepted by other people.
I’m not sure the kid knew how to appeal to girls, which would start with taking an active interest in one — be more about meeting her needs and listening/interacting with her. Not just an object to have sex and affection with.
Emotionally disturbed kid who turned homicidal. We’re seeing a lot of them.
Lurking Canadian
@SiubhanDuinne: I knew it had to be fake. There is no circumstance under which Wayne LaPierre will support gun control.
trollhattan
@? Martin:
My kid’s (California) elementary school had a lockdown last fall because a parent called the cops after seeing somebody in the neighborhood with a gun. As it turned out, someone had returned home from hunting and was showing the gun to another guy, out on the street. i.e., The parent did the right thing and while nothing illegal had transpired, this responsible gun owner had a lapse of judgement doing his show-and-tell at the same time parents are dropping off their kids.
The backstory: two years ago, the same school locked down because of an active shooter in the neighborhood. That ended when a cop shot him dead after he’d shot the cop’s dog. There were two others in the neighborhood that had to be rounded up (they’d chased these folks for nearly a hundred miles, and they happened to get off the freeway near my kid’s school).
To my knowledge, armed
guardsjanitors have never been suggested for the school. Maybe because they can only afford a janitor one day/week.ruemara
@ruemara: efu autocorrect. KICKSTARTER.
Elizabelle
@Mnemosyne (iPad Mini):
There was a previous mass murder at UCSB? Oh boy.
@pseudonymous in nc: Remind me, what’s MRA?
Frankensteinbeck
@Elizabelle:
Like a lot of problems, loneliness and a feeling of universal romantic rejection is terrible. This does not even come close to being a viable reason for mass murder. It’s a difference of scale so great as to become a difference of kind.
cckids
@Elizabelle:
Yes. I won’t watch the video, either, but . . . he’s a nice-looking kid, he’s got “Hollywood” connections, he drives the BMW, so he’s got $$. Not to be small-minded, but all of those things usually will get you a date with someone. (yes, often someone with issues of her own, but still) What must he have been like as a person, to interact with, that made him so toxic?
If his poor-me rant is true, that is.
Elizabelle
@cckids:
If you are small-minded, you and I are on the same wavelength there. Very curious case.
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
It must be comforting to go through life so thunderously simple-minded.
If it was so comforting why would they need guns?
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@Elizabelle:
Yep, about 13 years ago. He didn’t have a gun, so he ran people over with his car:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isla_Vista_massacre
? Martin
@Elizabelle: Men’s rights advocate.
Basically, the defenders of ‘she was asking for it’.
xian
@jonas: if you realize it’s just their word for liberalism and basic fairness, there’s no need for much more of a codebook.
Ruckus
@ruemara:
Either way is appropriate.
SiubhanDuinne
@Elizabelle:
Kind of related: there was an interview/feature this morning on Weekend Edition (NPR) with the just-retired principal at Columbine High School. He is apparently still carrying around a load of guilt, or at least a heavy sense of responsibility, that the shootings back in 1999 occurred on his watch, and he wonders whether he might have been more involved, more attentive to the two boys who were the shooters. Apparently he has made huge changes in his own leadership of the school in the past 15 years, and plans to devote a large part of his time post-retirement to identifying and working with troubled youth before they decide to shoot up a school or shopping mall.
Tiny Tim
MRAs organize around one valid point they have which is men sometimes get screwed in divorce and custody cases (not even saying they get disproportionately screwed, just, yes, sometimes people get screwed by the system) But then they project “bitches suck and why won’t they all sleep with me” onto everything.
SiubhanDuinne
@Lurking Canadian:
Right you are!
trollhattan
@Ruckus:
My “educated” gun-fondler acquaintances say the following:
A gun is a tool. And I carry a tool the same as I have a spare tire in the trunk, because I never know when I’ll need a tool.
They go to great lengths to make it sound adult and non-emotional, not like those riffraff. But, it’s the old “when all you have is a hammer every problem is a nail” mentality, only a gun (pbut) is an infinitely better tool than a hammer. Because.
swbarnes2
@Frankensteinbeck:
And it’s just as bad for just as many girls. Worse, I think.
But women virtually never shoot up crowds of people, because they aren’t taught to think that they are entitled to male attention. This guy was clearly taught exactly that. Someone said that his parents might have missed warning signs? I’m guessing that his father inculcated his son to believe that he was entitled to a warm vagina, and told him that women who didn’t deliver were cold hearted b*tches wrongfully withholding the boy’s rightful property.
This isn’t about a sad kid. This is about someone who thought that other people were property he had a legitimate claim to, plus he had the means to violently protest his wrongful disinheritance.
Elizabelle
@Mnemosyne (iPad Mini):
WP eated my comment. To try again:
The earlier Isla Vista mass murder: murder by Saab, and that kid was ALSO the son of a Hollywood director. Stranger than fiction.
From a 2002 LA Times article about the earlier case, which I’ll break into segments:
? Martin
@Elizabelle: One of the challenges with places with Isla Vista is that young people who may not have particularly good experience with relationships get tossed in a setting where there’s a very distorted idea of what relationships should be. We see a bit of that, where young people (almost exclusively men) have this idea that relationships in college look like frat parties/spring break where girls are lining up (or are easily pliable) to meet whatever vision of sex/relationship they have developed.
It’s not that they can’t get a date, it’s that they can’t get what they want on their terms.
Elizabelle
WP ate the second part of the 2002 LA Times story, again, so just click the link if you’re interested.
Quote from the driver’s dad, a TV director, saying they had not realized kid was might be mentally ill was what caught my eye. (This after earlier attempted strangling of his sister.)
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
Exactly.
A tool carrying a tool.
But they are correct a gun is nothing more than a tool. It’s a tool intended for killing and nothing else. An axe is a tool intended for cutting wood, if implemented improperly it can be used for killing. As can a car, a can opener, a steak knife, even the keys to that car can be used not the way intended and kill. But a gun only has one purpose. To Kill. Even if used improperly it can and does still kill. Even if used by an unskilled operator it kills. Even if it breaks in operation it can kill.(Almost lost a shoulder when the stock broke on the shotgun I was using duck hunting) Guns are always dangerous. They are dangerous when “unloaded”. They are dangerous when they are used as a d*ck enhancer, mainly because the person with that small d*ck has the mentality of a 7 yr old.
I have lots of tools. Over the course of 50 years the total cost is somewhere well north of a million dollars worth of tools. Some of them could be used to kill or maim. I’ve lost blood and have scars from some occasions when I’ve misused some of them. I’ve build so many things in my life that I can only remember a few of them. Other than hunting for food or being in the military I’ve never had need of a tool whose only purpose was to kill. And as I now hunt in supermarkets and am long out of the military, don’t even have those reasons any more.
Elizabelle
@SiubhanDuinne:
Retiring Columbine principal turned guilt into action. From NPR.
Thank you. Will give it a listen.
@? Martin: Yeah. We’re turning out alienated kids with unrealistic expectations. And some of them have access to guns.
The first happens all over the world. The second, we Americans are number one.
? Martin
@swbarnes2: The problem for girls is actually the reverse, in my experience. Some girls come to the idea that if they agree to be the target of that desire, that the emotional connection will follow. So some of boys aren’t getting what they want, and they lash out. And some of the girls are giving the boys what they want, but can’t escape the loneliness because they are emotionally discarded. The girls take their lives because they feel rejected, even with the attention. The boys more often do the same, but sometimes lash out like this.
There seems to be enough evidence to support the notion that easy access to porn is disrupting some kids notions of relationships and sex. And it’s not just that porn is out there, it’s that every possible flavor of porn is out there, so you can find whatever fantasy you might have played out by willing participants in a context where there is no cost attributed to how that scenario plays out. I know the kinds of kids that choose to go to Santa Barbara vs other UC campuses, and Isla Vista is a big draw for many of them. They want the kind of party environment they see in movies and on the internet. It’s a magnet for people that tend to fall into these social traps, so they self-select into UCSB which only magnifies the problem.
Ruckus
@? Martin:
You triggered a memory of a party I went to at UCLA once. About 30 or so people in an apartment, lots of booze but it was early so not a lot of drinking done yet. One guy, by himself, couldn’t get a conversation going with anyone, let alone any women. Put his fist through the wall and then walked out. At the time I just thought he was an aggressive drunk but looking back he was exactly the guy you described.
? Martin
@Ruckus: Statistics are that about 20% of college women will be sex assault victim. That doesn’t happen in a vacuum – there’s got to be a lot of men on the other side of that statistic.
scav
@? Martin: Entitled assholes self-select into a lot of schools, often the most prestigious they can manage. It’s not as though “party” schools are the only ones getting shot up either.
Villago Delenda Est
@raven:
Don’t wanna be an Airborne Ranger
Don’t wanna fight in any war
You can have the guts and danger
I’m going to join the Finance Corps
(for you non current and former military types, these are marching cadence songs (“Jodies”) used to keep people in step when doubletime marching, which is basically a moderate run. These two stanzas were popular when I was in ROTC, as a snarky counterpoint to the rah rah “I want to be an Airborne Ranger” variety)
I can recall these so easily because I was a cadence caller…the guy who ran along side the formation and kept them in step by calling cadence.
Mnemosyne
@swbarnes2:
Probably not his dad (or at least not just his dad) — there are more than enough places in the culture (TV, movies, magazines, music, porn, etc.) to feed him the same message over and over and over again. Take entitlement (rich+white+male), mix it with mental illness and social awkwardness, and you have an extremely toxic combination.
trollhattan
@Ruckus:
Tell it, brother. Can I get an “amen”?
To folks I know who love, love, love target shooting I ask “why don’t you leave it locked up at the range while not practicing your hobby?”
No takers, yet.
trollhattan
@Elizabelle:
On behalf of Omnes and myself, I’d like to state that Saab ownership does not automatically make you a murderer.
Thank you for your time.
Mnemosyne
@Elizabelle:
Though it looks like I need to amend my earlier comment since I misremembered Attias’s diagnosis: he was bipolar and had a psychotic break, not schizophrenic. But, again, the late teens-early 20s are the most common time for young men to show their first serious signs of mental illness.
Elizabelle
@trollhattan:
Or a socialist. Possibly a brie-eater, though.
@? Martin: Interesting points you and others raise. Porn. Fantasy. Immaturity and worse.
I am thinking that along with porn, the internet and TV can be, in a smallish way, partly responsible too, because it’s entertainment you consume without having to be necessarily connected to others.
So multi-faceted, but think how hard it is to get the attention of anyone with using a smartphone or other digital device.
And how much many of us zone out with the internet at home where previously we would have been interacting with others in the room. However less interestingly.
I am guilty of that. Have to remember to put the laptop away and pay attention to the young ‘uns (or boring and repetitive old ones) in the room. (That f.lux device has helped immeasurably.)
Affluenza (or deprivation when it’s presumed affluence is the normative state), alienation, electronic gratification, and guns. All in one societal package.
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
Leave it somewhere, even locked up? Are you crazy? When you need a tool, you have to have that tool. You must be insane to suggest this. Could you leave your d*ck locked in a locker at the d*ck range? I didn’t think so.
It is a tool but it is a tool that has some sort of magical properties, it makes weak men stronger, it enhances the size and horsepower of their d*cks, and makes pioneer women swoon. Of course we have fewer pioneer women around anymore so they need more guns to attract the few left. Sort of like peacock plumage, without the beauty and bird shit.
Mnemosyne
@Elizabelle:
Plus the fact that people who are having delusions can find online communities that reinforce those delusions. This guy found an MRA site, but the guy who tried to abduct Elie Weisel spent a lot of time on Holocaust denial websites and it looks like the Sandy Hook conspiracy theory a-hole who was harassing the families and insisting that their child never existed spent a lot of time trading theories online. So it doesn’t help that people who have lost touch with reality are able to find online communities that reinforce their delusions.
karen
Let’s bring guns to funerals. That way the victims will already be in the right place.
sicilian dish
“ammosexual”. I’m stealing that.
trollhattan
@Ruckus:
Heh.
I think I need a Crescent Gun.
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
What is a Crescent Gun?
My research shows a Crescent Firearms mfg in CT. I was expecting to see a pistol with the barrel bent 180 degrees. Tried an number of different searches, saw some uninteresting pictures but nothing along the lines I was thinking.
Steeplejack (tablet)
@Ruckus:
I think he was making a tool joke about a “crescent gun” like a “crescent wrench.”
trollhattan
@Ruckus:
Was just imagining if I had one tool only, what it would need to be. Maybe I’ll walk into BillyBob’s Gun Emporium and ask.
This is the gun I’m stuck with.
nancydarling
@Ash Can: I watched the video and read the article as well. If the kid was upset because he couldn’t get laid, it wasn’t because he was lacking in the looks department—he is not unattractive.
Reading between the lines, I suspect the kid has always been a loser. He wasn’t a UCSB student, but went to nearby Santa Barbara City College. This tells me he probably didn’t have the grades to get into a 4-year college.
If someone can’t get laid in college these days, there are some serious personality problems going on.
muddy
@Ruckus: I know some who have many guns, because they want to be ready to defend themselves at any moment. In a place where nothing ever happens. But then they can’t ever go to town because they have to stay home and babysit the guns, who would be left defenseless.
At least it keeps them off the streets.
Ruckus
@Steeplejack (tablet):
Nice catch. Never made the connection. Maybe I’ve had too many tools over the years, I never think crescent wrench when I have the proper sized tool.
ItAintEazy
@Ash Can:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUQIYLQ2rbk
You can guess what Governor Reagan did pretty much the next day.
Ruckus
@muddy:
If they would all stay home for ever and cuddle with their guns, and never shoot innocent people, no one would know or care. But they don’t. That gun(s) gives them courage, like alcohol does to so many. And like alcohol which can be misused and cause death(especially when combined with a transportation tool), if we could figure out a way to keep people from making stupid decisions that cause death and destruction we wouldn’t need to keep them from their fetishes.
Nutella
It’s certainly possible that the UCSB murderer had a mental illness but it’s likely that he did not and was simply a vicious and deliberate criminal. Why be so quick to assume that someone who commits a crime with motivations that we don’t understand must be mentally ill?
Are all terrorists and murderers of strangers mentally ill? Or are many/most of them violent criminals?
Ruckus
@Nutella:
I think in this case it stems from the video that he posted. I don’t think anyone was excusing the shooting either, just a possible explanation. If there was a mental issue it also speaks to the last 30-40 yrs of cutting back funding for mental health issues because it’s not like there are so very few situations like this one.
Mnemosyne
@Nutella:
Statistically speaking, a guy who is a mass murderer in his early 20s is usually mentally ill — see also the Colorado movie theater shooter, the Virginia Tech shooter, the guy who shot Gabrielle Giffords, etc. For men, the most common age for the first major psychotic break to happen (if schizophrenic) or the first serious manic episode to happen (if bipolar) is late teens to early 20s.
Once men get into their 30s and later, a mass murder is more likely to be the work of a sociopath than someone who’s mentally ill.
ulee
@nancydarling: Way to go. If someone can’t get into a good college because they don’t have the grades, then they must have always been a loser. Then if someone can’t get laid in college these days, you say they have personality problems. This guy was a twisted person. You just have personality problems.
Nutella
@Mnemosyne:
When I see random choice of victims I’m more likely to accept a mental illness story. When the victims are women, or minorities, or abortion clinic workers it looks political.
Nutella
If any of you are thinking that the video shows the shooter to be unique or at least so weird that he must be crazy, see http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/ for coverage of the political movement he participated in.
Barry
@Ash Can: “What would do it would be a group of these morons shooting up a Goldman Sachs board meeting or a Koch Brothers political strategy confab. If that ever happened you’d see the Second Amendment overhauled — if not flushed outright — before you could say “Supreme Court activism.””
Seconded. The 1% (or really, the 1% of the 1%) knows that these guys will shoot their wives, children and selves before ever turning a gun on one of the actual elites.
Which makes them like the best slaves evah!
Even if they have a slave revolt, it will consist of them killing themselves.
Jebediah, RBG
Just read that the Santa Barbara shooter was “high-functioning Asperger’s” and was being treated by multiple therapists.
ulee
@Jebediah, RBG: My first impression watching the videos was that he had Asperger’s syndrome. I’ve worked with people with this diagnosis. They are often very intelligent, self-investigative, and are distressed that they can not connect with others on an emotional level.
? Martin
Reports are that the shooter had Aspergers. Doesn’t necessarily explain the shooting, but it does explain the difficulty connecting with people. There are previous instances of people with Aspergers committing crimes like this, and the prevailing thinking is that these individual have trouble communicating their frustration verbally (and difficulty getting people to listen to them companionably because they have Aspergers). So, a little bit like an adult version of a kid who hits when angry.
But this isn’t necessarily someone you would classify as having mental problems. I’m not sure if you would deny them a gun license. They can drive, get admitted to a university, etc. There’s typically nothing about Aspergers that presents a threat to the public. So, I don’t think the Aspergers is necessary an explanation for it happening, but perhaps an explanation for why it happened the way it did for this individual.
nancydarling
@? Martin: My daughter just read the same thing about the Aspergers. Also that his parents are devastated. They have been concerned about his youtube postings and recently called the police or sheriff’s department to relay their concern. They also said he had endured a lot of teasing throughout his life.
How hard is it to teach your children to be kind? Not hard at all to my way of thinking.
Nutella
Another report is that it was a hate crime.
Mnemosyne
@Nutella:
Scroll up to read the story of the guy who tried to kidnap Elie Wiesel. He was a Holocaust denier and an anti-Semite, but he was also diagnosed as mentally ill. Political violence and mental illness are not exclusive to one another.
@? Martin:
If that’s the case, my guess is that he had a mental illness that was comorbid with the Asperger’s, similar to the Sandy Hook murderer (who was also — guess what! — a man in his early 20s). Things like bipolar, depression, or schizophrenia can be extremely difficult to detect in people with autism spectrum disorders because of their communication difficulties.
? Martin
@nancydarling: Easy to teach them to be kind. Difficult to maintain that in a group setting. Herd mentality is very real. My son is very kind, but his instinct when with friends and they turn on someone or some population is to denounce them. So, he’ll make friends and get in a group only to reject them when they step out of line. So he’s not able to pull more students in his direction, and he’s become a bit of a loner due to that. It’s not easy to cut across the grain.
@Nutella: It might rise to that due to the video, but I suspect if the Aspergers report is correct, they won’t.
Mnemosyne
@? Martin:
It can’t really “rise” to anything since the guy died and won’t be going to trial. It’s still unclear if he killed himself or was shot by a sheriff’s deputy.
pseudonymous in nc
@Tiny Tim:
But the majority of online “MRAs” appear to be young men: teenagers, early 20s. And being on the autism spectrum (or being mentally ill in other ways) doesn’t make you a pre-criminal.
All that said, there is a genuine issue with online “communities of interest” that gather dispersed individuals and both validate and amplify hatred, especially among younger men. It has the potential to provide no less of a radicalisation than the ones associated with religion or politics.
Mnemosyne
@Nutella:
Also, too — one of the reasons I’m sticking with my mental illness hypothesis is not because I think it gives him an excuse, but because I think it shows that the pervasive problems in our society (misogyny in this case, racism and right-wing beliefs in other cases) can be picked up on by a few mentally ill persons, who then act on them in horrifying ways. The only real difference between this guy and the others on the message board he posted on is that he picked up a gun and acted out their fantasies for them.
ETA: Edited to make sure I emphasized that a few mentally ill people do things like this. Population-wise, the number is vanishingly small, but it’s horrifying when these outliers pop up to commit these crimes.
ulee
@Mnemosyne: When I was a kid in elementary school in the seventies, we got half pint cartons of milk with our lunches. On the carton read–Homo-milk–meaning it was homogenized milk. At lunch, some kids would say that there were homos among us. I had no idea what it meant, but I understood that it was a bad thing, a way to get mocked and marginalized.
? Martin
@Mnemosyne: Depression is very common with high functioning Aspergers, particularly in teens. They know what normal relationships look like and are frustrated that they can’t do it. They try really hard, but just can’t connect in the way that they need. The other students/faculty actually tend to be compassionate toward it in the first year or two, but over time, when interactions inevitably get more complex, it breaks down on both sides. The student gets frustrated and makes more and more desperate efforts to make it work, and the rest of the group grow weary of the efforts and feel like the student is too disruptive.
I have a number of Aspergers students, they all run into this at some point. We probably invest more energy per student looking for solutions for how to integrate Aspergers students than with any other problem we have. One of my most difficult student shooting incidents was with a student with Aspergers. He basically descended into stalking a fellow student he couldn’t get the attention of.
We’re having more and more student/gun incidents each year. It’s very alarming. This incident doesn’t really surprise me. That said, I wouldn’t be surprised if Napolitano does something substantial in response to this. She moves pretty quickly and decisively, IMO.
debbie
@Mnemosyne:
I think pinning it on mental illness gives too many people the opportunity to blame others as well as self-justification for not having to make any changes. The real problem is rage, and every single human being is capable of that. I’d bet LaPierre would come up with an excuse even if 2,000 children were butchered.
Jebediah, RBG
It’s not done being horrible yet, apparently… three bodies found in shooter’s apartment.
Ruckus
@debbie:
Yes we are all capable of rage. Some humans are not capable of controlling that on their own. We owe it to each other to help those that can be helped.
Not noticing that a person has a mental issue makes it harder to first get help, and second makes it more acceptable that we don’t need to fund comprehensive mental health because there isn’t a problem. That doesn’t make things any better and as there are more people there will be more issues of people with mental issues becoming public problems. They need to be helped, not shuffled out of sight. It is a cultural and society wide problem that has been getting worse over the last 40-50 yrs. It was a problem before that but it was swept under the rug or hidden away in “homes”. It started to change but that was swept away with the idea that taxes were too high, health care was taken care of by employers and for profit insurance, and the idea that our culture was the best and therefore couldn’t have problems. None of which helped. You can’t run and hide from these issues, they will find us and affect us, like it or not.
ulee
@Jebediah, RBG: My only resource on this is the Daily Mail. If this is true, it’s just terrible beyond words.
Jebediah, RBG
@ulee:
Yup – supposedly in a manifesto he said he would begin the killing quietly, by luring people to his apartment.
Fuck, work is done and I am going to go home and hug the shit out of my dogs.
Origuy
There’s speculation on my Facebook feed (great source, I know) that he was using steroids. These can cause violent rages in users.
beergoggles
Shootings make such a great drinking game.
Shit ain’t gonna change until enough Republicans get shot. Just like the last serious gun control legislation happened because a powerful Republican was at the other end of the bullet. This is why I think groups like Occupy need to start packing and open carrying at their protests. The moment this happens we’ll have gun control legislation rushed through congress.
Earl
If you are ON therapy, or have EVER been on any mental therapy…Why are YOU being allowed to buy, or possess a gun…!
People, it’s the same thing over and over again…a bunch of YOUNG immature boys who can’t handle rejection…
And you want to blame all of the responsible gun owners in the nation !
Jebediah, RBG
@Earl:
Only if they oppose background checks and other reasonable gun control measures. Let’s not forget, second amendment says “well regulated” not “completely unregulated.”
MrApple
@Buffalo Rude: m Does that mean that the anti-gun crowd is slick and formless like a Ken doll under their overpriced hipster jeans?
MrApple
@Jebediah, RBG: And they were stabbed to death.
MrApple
@Jebediah, RBG: And yet the California Shooter passed a background check with an FFL Dealer three times as well as being checked out personally by the local Sheriff’s Department. So how are those background checks supposed to help again?
MrApple
@trollhattan: You don’t sound like much of a friend to your “friends” by backstabbing them on their views on firearms. I’m glad you’re not my friend; that kind of “friend” I don’t need.
MrApple
@GregB: You should really look into the DHS using “no hesitation targets”.
Jebediah, RBG
@MrApple:
You’re right. So either the background checks need to be much more thorough, or we need to limit handgun ownership to revolvers – no detachable magazines, between their capacity and speed of reloading they allow nutjobs too great a rate of fire. Rifle magazines should hold no more than five rounds. If you can’t hit that deer or repel that home invader with five shots, you need more training and practice. So, no guns at all without an appropriate training course – which would be another chance for nutjobbery to be noticed pre-massacre. You can’t drive a car without proving you can do it safely. It should be the same with guns. The Constitution does not say “every incompetent boob should be able to run around with multiple thirty-round magazines” – it says “well-regulated militia.”
Helen
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