Has today’s mass shooting happened yet? DougJ has the latest on the two Gadsden flag-carrying white supremacists who killed a couple of cops, a Walmart shopper and then themselves in Vegas yesterday.
A madman’s attempt to create mayhem at a Georgia courthouse on Friday was cut short when the heavily armed suspect was killed by police after wounding a cop.
Thursday’s shooting at Seattle Pacific University ended when a good guy with pepper spray stopped a bad guy with a gun as he was reloading.
Balloon Juice commenter Skerry’s daughter was on campus when that shooting happened:
My daughter was on the campus of the latest campus shooting in Seattle. She is physically fine, but very emotionally upset. I am so fucking angry right now. Goddamn ammosexuals. How many do we have to sacrifice before something fucking gets done. A shooting at my local mall in Maryland earlier this year. A shooting at my alma mater, Purdue University, this year. It is too fucking close to home and happening way too much.
I used to be pretty open about gun rights. Grew up with a hunter father. Grandparents had a farm in WV. Guns around. Married a hunter. But weapons were seen as tools. Not as fetishes. Old school NRA before the money took over. Locked up away from children. Not paraded around on city streets and in restaurants and the fucking Target store. Wacko in Lafayette, IN walking around with a rifle to protest loss of a driver’s license.
I’m ready to say take them all away. Yes, I’m turning into a “gun-grabber”. Keep them stored at a range. Check them in/out for hunting with proper licensing and training. Keep them off my streets and away from my children.
The day after Skerry’s daughter was terrorized at her college, I had the following text exchange with my daughter, who was then at her school for the last day of 10th grade:
As it turns out, the school administrators locked the facility down “out of an abundance of caution” because a gun-toting felon down the street from the school had riddled an acquaintance with bullets and then fled the scene, heading in the general direction of the school. He was later caught, and the kids were never in any danger.
But this is the country we live in now, where children aren’t surprised by the prospect of being endangered by armed lunatics at school. And let me tell you, as a parent, your blood runs cold when you read something like that.
Richard Martinez, whose 20-year-old son was killed by the misogynist gun terrorist in California a couple of weeks ago, has had the courage to call out the NRA and gutless lawmakers who are its servile lackeys. Before him, the families of the innocent elementary school kids and teachers who were slaughtered by a Bushmaster-toting nut at Sandy Hook did all they could to support common-sense gun safety legislation, as did the president and many Democrats and even a Republican or two in Congress. Nothing happened.
In one of the many threads following a post on a mass shooting at this blog, someone said nothing would change until the majority of people had been affected directly by a mass shooting. (I’d try to find the comment to attribute it, but there have been so goddamned many mass shootings and threads about them that I don’t know where to start.) I think there’s something to that, though I hope that doesn’t mean we’ll have to get to the point where we all know someone who died in a mass shooting or was on the scene and terrorized by a gunman.
Awhile back, I highlighted an teeny-tiny victory against the ammosexuals – the voluntary rollback of the “hey, let’s get together and carry our AR-15s into Chipotle” strategy, which even the NRA condemned as stupid and counterproductive before walking back the one common-sense thing they’d said on the gun issue in at least a generation.
For a moment, it seemed the NRA recognized the danger the increasing kookification of the gun culture in this country could have on their gun manufacturer paymasters’ bottom line in the long run, but in the end, the NRA was unable to corral the monster they spent so much time and energy creating.
I’m with Skerry on this — I grew up in a hunting family in a rural area, and while I don’t personally have or want a gun, I can understand why hunters and country folks find them necessary. I could even understand why adults might keep a secured firearm in their own home for personal defense, even though I think it’s a stupid strategy since they’re far more likely to get depressed and blow their own brains out or kill their spouse in a jealous rage than stop a home invader.
But these morons who insist on carrying guns everywhere — concealed or not — and these idiots who pose an insurmountable obstacle to even the most common-sense legislation like closing the gun show loophole or improving background checks are turning me into a gun-grabber too.
We’re ass-deep in guns in this country, but the rate of gun ownership is declining. The kooks are setting the gun-owner policy agenda, and there is terrorism and violence implicit even in the names of their organizations, e.g., “Come and Take It.”
Think about what that means for a minute. Gun owners who aren’t goddamned idiots need to rein these motherfuckers in, or we (as in We the People, the non-gun owning majority, backed by our local, state and federal government agencies) WILL come and take it, not just from the assholes but from you.
Don’t think this worm can’t be turned. Sooner or later, the tipping point will be reached, either in a shooting on such a massive scale that the currently complacent will rightly recognize it as yet another intolerable incidence of domestic terrorism or as the more localized atrocities affect a critical mass of people. Either way, prying the guns out of your cold, dead hands is becoming a more attractive prospect every fucking day.
Villago Delenda Est
Full Metal Kook.
That’s what the ammosexual culture is all about.
About time to start prying these overgrown 7 year-olds’ toys from their cold, dead hands.
Aimai
Seven year olds have more compassion and thoughtful grace about sharing and caring than these gun nuts. Ive known plenty of seven year olds. It is not a selfish or irrational age.
The Other Chuck
This. So this.
raven
I saw a good friend at a Memorial Day Vets gig. He was bitching about a mutual friend who had blown him shit about having a bunch of guns. He said “when the shit comes down he’ll run out to my place for protection”. I’ve known this guy for 30 years and we’ve always been close. This morning he “liked” a teaparty patriots post calling for the lawless Obama to be impeached. I had to unfriend him. Here’s my problem, this guys and his kids lived with me for a while when he was having serious problems. I know he’s not stupid and I just marvel at the shit that he spouts and believes. Something just ain’t right.
Elizabelle
Loved one guy’s comment on a Las Vegas newspaper site. To effect of:
This is a sick gun culture, and pandering to it is starting to place all of us at risk. Why can’t your Home Depot/college campus/playground/pizza parlor/elementary school/health club be site of the next shooting?
There is no way to promise that it will not be, if it’s located in the great US of A.
taylormattd
@Villago Delenda Est:
Yup.
kindness
That Good Guy with the pepper spray trashed the gun humpers meme.
Elizabelle
@raven:
Sorry to hear that. It would be painful to experience.
My guess: he’s got his own channel of reinforcement among the ammosexual and rightwing crowd.
Much like we’re a kindred culture on Balloon Juice.
I would say we are more tethered to reality here, though.
Sherparick
It is very simple regarding guns. Politicians in the Republican Party will have to start losing primaries on this issue in Red districts and Red States. Same with environmental issues. Politicians in the Republican Party have scurried to the right because the only pressure they feel is from the right. The majority of their people are to busy living to show up for primaries, so the paranoids, the 2d Amendmenters, the abortion zealots show up and dominate. Then in the general, the majority of these people vote along their traditional tribal lines, and since the Republican Part is now identified as the “The Real Murikan Party” that is how they vote. Not on issues but on identity. The issues voting is for the primaries.
SatanicPanic
On the way to work there was a brand new SUV waiting at the light next to me with a little Gadsen flag on the bumper. I get that there judging people’s political views against their social class is kind of silly, but many, how do you square those two things? You’re wealthy, allowed to display your political beliefs openly but you’re being tyrannized. OK dude. Whatever.
cleek
ain’t gonna change. we’re a death cult.
danimal
It burns me with the anger of a thousand suns that I must agree with you on this. It’s going to take a tragic abundance of dead Americans before the populace turns on the gun freaks. Preventable deaths, all of them. I don’t understand why the great American center waits until a disaster or a massive tragedy before taking issues like gun violence or global warming seriously.
These issues can be discussed, debated and decided before the tragedy occurs, you know. Don’t even get me started on the absolutely useless misinformation industry that calls itself American journalism. Policy is all a game to them. Who wins, who loses, who cares? Save innocent lives, it’s more important than a daily blip in the polls or a win in the news cycle. Preventable, it’s all preventable.
raven
@Elizabelle: He used to have an MG repair shop. he and a bunch of guys basically drank all day and worked on cars. He fought the VA for years and finally got 100% PTSD profile and, not only could, but pretty much had to stop working. He quit drinking and moved out to the country where he manages a rural American Legion Post (money under the table I’m sure). He’s not the only one of my vet buddies to go ’round the bend and it does sting.
NonyNony
This is exactly what I suspect the statement from the NRA last week was about – an acknowledgement that the Open Carry Texas yahoos were hurting the brand and were going to cause serious blowback when they inevitably fuck things up. As only a group of people brandishing long arms in a crowded public space can do. Especially when it’s clear that none of them have been properly trained in how to hold a gun when you’re not shooting it, let alone in how to carry it safely (two things I had to be taught before anyone allowed me to even fire a goddamn rifle, I might add.)
I think you’ll find quite a number of folks here saying it. I know I posted something to that effect somewhere – possibly here, possibly at LGM, possibly elsewhere. The reaction to Sandy Hook has pretty much convinced me that the 60-some% of US households that don’t own guns aren’t going care until a majority of them know someone personally injured or killed in a shooting. I suspect that that point will actually occur, given how stupidly loose gun laws have become and how stupidly adamant the NRA and the gun nuts are in making them even looser. At which point the script will flip and the 30-some% of households that own guns will find themselves suddenly vilified by their neighbors.
It may not end pretty – to pull a likely number out of my ass probably 27% of gun owners think that they’re in a silent majority and that if the government starts clamping down on gun laws violent revolution will be inevitable. They’re deluded, but that delusion makes them dangerous.
tesslibrarian
While I was reading this, my husband sent me this article: http://www.engadget.com/2014/06/09/protecht-bodyguard-blanket/
I want to think we’ll hit a critical mass of people who want more restrictions on guns, but poll numbers don’t seem to matter on this. There’s now a f**king market for blankets to protect children from bullets. How long until the material is made into curtains, bedding, insulation. Because heaven forbid someone who owns a gun be a responsible, not-cowardly asshole, which is apparently the current meaning of the 2nd Amendment. (Originalism, my ass.)
raven
@danimal: You guys are dreaming. If Sandy Hook didn’t do it nothing will.
The Dangerman
On guns? Not a chance…
…I do wonder about the tipping point on some of the RW rhetoric, however. For fucks sake, people are threatening the PARENTS? Unfuckingbelievable, but since FOX is now all Bergdahl (did you hear he was a deserter?!), all the time, I suppose it was inevitable.
Davis X. Machina
@NonyNony:
I’m surprised such violence isn’t more common, more organized, and more overtly political. I always assumed McVeigh was the thin end of a wedge. Perhaps he was just before his time. We’ve spent the last 15 years preparing the conditions for an American Freikorps. Technical expertise, ideology, hardware, all waiting out there like a thick layer of duff on the forest floor, waiting for a spark.
I suppose the present recession just wasn’t bad enough.
Omnes Omnibus
There is no reason for even the most avid hunter to own more than one or two shotguns and one or two rifles. Semiautomatic assault weapons are not good hunting tools. Pistols of any kind are not good hunting tools.
SatanicPanic
But on the bright side- look at that photo of those dudes in Chipotle. Dorks. Those guys at the Bundy Ranch? More dorks. Give it 5 years and who is going to want to buy a gun? just more dorks.
tesslibrarian
@raven: Not gun-related (that I’m aware of), but my godfather went through a similar transformation after 9/11. He’d been skewing rightward for awhile, but started listening to Boortz and Beck on top of his afternoon of Limbaugh. He’s not dumb, he cares about the environment (owned one of the first hybrid vehicles available), but is now part of a culture that doesn’t allow him any leeway.
He keeps it down when I’m around now. After sending to EVERYONE he knew some anti-liberal screed by Ann Coulter, I’d replied that he’d known me since I was born, had changed my diapers, taught me how to spell “GEORGIA” with the cheer when I was 3 and we were stationed near Tacoma, WA–did he really think all those things about me? He never replied, but his wife, my godmother who has also started to skew right, told him he needed to decide which was more important: spouting off or a relationship with me. It’s made things better, but we don’t hang out so much anymore other than tailgating. I will always feel deeply sad about that.
tesslibrarian
@raven: Not gun-related (that I’m aware of), but my godfather went through a similar transformation after 9/11. He’d been skewing rightward for awhile, but started listening to Boortz and Beck on top of his afternoon of Limbaugh. He’s not dumb, he cares about the environment (owned one of the first hybrid vehicles available), but is now part of a culture that doesn’t allow him any leeway.
He keeps it down when I’m around now. After sending to EVERYONE he knew some anti-liberal screed by Ann Coulter, I’d replied that he’d known me since I was born, had changed my diapers, taught me how to spell “GEORGIA” with the cheer when I was 3 and we were stationed near Tacoma, WA–did he really think all those things about me? He never replied, but his wife, my godmother who has also started to skew right, told him he needed to decide which was more important: spouting off or a relationship with me. It’s made things better, but we don’t hang out so much anymore other than tailgating. I will always feel deeply sad about that.
tesslibrarian
@raven: Not gun-related (that I’m aware of), but my godfather went through a similar transformation after 9/11. He’d been skewing rightward for awhile, but started listening to Boortz and Beck on top of his afternoon of Limbaugh. He’s not dumb, he cares about the environment (owned one of the first hybrid vehicles available), but is now part of a culture that doesn’t allow him any leeway.
He keeps it down when I’m around now. After sending to EVERYONE he knew some anti-liberal screed by Ann Coulter, I’d replied that he’d known me since I was born, had changed my diapers, taught me how to spell “GEORGIA” with the cheer when I was 3 and we were stationed near Tacoma, WA–did he really think all those things about me? He never replied, but his wife, my godmother who has also started to skew right, told him he needed to decide which was more important: spouting off or a relationship with me. It’s made things better, but we don’t hang out so much anymore other than tailgating. I will always feel deeply sad about that.
elmo
I own guns. When I lived in rural Tennessee, I once relied on a shotgun for home defense, and actually felt sufficiently threatened that I walked out onto the porch with the shotgun in my hands. I thought Heller was correctly decided, and I was happy with the result, because I thought DC’s total gun ban was unconstitutional. That was not all that long ago. Not all that long ago I considered myself a “pro-gun-rights” liberal.
But everything has changed. I am so sick, sick, sick and tired of this – and of the people theoretically on “my side” of the gun rights debate – that I no longer care if you do come and take it. You know what? If the choice has now come down to either a total ban and confiscation of things that go Bang, or the status quo of 27% of the population believing that they have the absolute right to bring loaded rifles into Chuck E. Cheez – then I’ll put a bow on the goddamn things as I turn them over to the police.
Fuck. Certain elements of this country really have gone fucking insane.
Cervantes
We just need to keep reminding these people that we are aware of their misfortune — that they have pathetic, tiny penises — and we sympathize. But they will just have to accept it, waving a gun around won’t make their itty bitty teeny weeny peenies any bigger.
Higgs Boson's Mate
I am unable to understand a nation in which peaceful protestors are jailed and/or pepper sprayed while gun wielding insurrectionists are allowed to threaten federal officials and then walk away scot-free.
raven
@tesslibrarian: Yea it’s pretty weird. Maybe it was 9/11 but I know a bunch of people right here in the Classic City that have gone nuts in the last few years. Makes me sad too.
tesslibrarian
FYWP
Heliopause
Somebody help me this problem from a freshman logic course:
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.
The Vegas shooters were bad guys.
The Vegas shooters were stopped when they shot themselves.
Therefore…
tesslibrarian
@raven: my godparents are long-time Athenians. Chamber of Commerce types but good people who were always willing to let class obligations dictate the schedule for their student workers. I miss Tuesday morning coffees with him at Jittery Joes. My dad is out of the picture, and I’ve always been incredibly close to my godfather. I despise Bush for a lot of things, but probably this situation the most.
big ole hound
Solution: If you see anyone with a firearm , dial 911 say you are threatened by him/her. The cops have to respond.
new word: AMMOSEXUAL. one who gets off on guns being displayed. They are just like a guy in a raincoat exposing himself to little girls except it is now legal.
raven
@tesslibrarian: Someday we’ll figure out who we are and say oh, it’s you!
eta Of course you have probably seen me on the Boomer project video’s!
Comrade Dread
No, it won’t.
It would take the monster the NRA and GOP have created, coddled, and nurtured turning on them before they’ll move on anything resembling gun control legislation.
It’s okay for other people to die for Moloch, but when the anti-government Neoconfederate psychos start demanding their blood, I expect a come to Jesus moment on the issue.
Gindy51
Does another one from yesterday count?
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/06/09/florida-sheriff-man-guns-down-3-daughters-wife-himself-in-everyday-usa-mass-killing/
Trollhattan
@kindness:
Yup, in addition to a counter-argument that we shouldn’t restrict ginormous ammo magazines.
My kid’s school locked down last year when armed idiots were in the neighorhood, exchanging gunfire wtih the cops; one was killed across the street from the school. This stuff is all too real, too common. Can you imagine finishing sixth grade and your most prominant memory is the day in second grade you spent two hours under your desk with the blinds drawn and the lights out?
Found out a neighbor’s son is a USCSB student and knew one of the murdered girls. We’re all living this, tolerating it for whatever reason.
raven
@Trollhattan: What do you suggest “we” do?
Southern Beale
Truly nobody could have anticipated this except for fucking everybody to the left of the John Birch Society. Which leaves out 80% of the Republican Party. Eagerly await the next 24 hour news cycle where we all soberly agree that the rhetoric needs to be calmed but, of course, “both sides do it,” because Harry Reid said something mean about Mitt Romney not paying his taxes that one time, etc. etc.
So fucking sick of this. And yes, it’s been about 24 hours so we are definitely overdue for our next mass shooting.
By the way, the Vegas shooters have completely taken attention away from the Georgia anti-government loon who tried to blow up the Cummins, GA courthouse on Friday. So many anti-government crazies whipped into a frenzy and actually getting their hands on explosives and guns. What to do? Oh, look! Shiny-sparkly-something-or-other!
NonyNony
@Davis X. Machina:
I’m not. To be an organized political movement you need organizers who think that they have something to gain. For an organized political movement to decide to use violence to achieve political ends, you need organizers who think that such violence will achieve those ends. And you need to recruit a large enough army of people willing to do the dirty work of fighting your war for you to achieve some end.
While you might be able to recruit an army, you aren’t going to be able to beat the US military at its own game. No one is going to spend real money on a right-wing militia that is out to overthrow the government by conventional means. You might supply an army of “brownshirts” to scare people into thinking that if they don’t vote the right way all hell will break loose, but that’s about the limit. And you can’t take that too far because it can backfire – if people found out that, say, a Republican Senator was secretly affiliated with a right-wing militia group that had killed some cops, I doubt that Senator would last very long.
There’s no payoff for that kind of organized political violence in the US – at least not at this point in history. Things could change.
danimal
@raven: It’s not a dream to realize that Sandy Hook wasn’t enough to break the logjam, it’s a nightmare. The situation that finally affects change will be an order of magnitude worse than Sandy Hook, and that is depressing as hell to contemplate.
raven
@Southern Beale: There’s a friend of the Georgia guy that says he had nothing to do with any “anti-government” movement. He was pushed into a corner over a dope bust. Don’t yell at me, I’m just reporting.
Ruckus
I remember reading this but not who wrote it. But it is true. Conservatives have created a mass psychosis and to be corrected it has to have enough counterbalancing mass. Not necessarily numbers but strength of the belief needs an opposing force. You’d think all the talk and attempts at some control would be enough but they are aimed at the wrong solution. Yes the guns need to be controlled, if for no other reason, we don’t live in the 18th century and life isn’t quite the same. But to fix this the underlying story must change. To do that we have to get a much better handle on racism, on poverty, on employment, on religion in politics and schools, on our military might issue, on inequality, on crumbling infrastructure, on…… The gun nuts are a symptom of the issue, they are not the main issue. An important and deadly one for sure, but one that will not change without addressing many of our core problems. And that is something that conservatives absolutely do not want to address, because they make money off the problems.
Elizabelle
I remember how the Beltway Sniper killings changed behavior in the DC area. Some of the killings occurred near a Michael’s crafts store and a Shopper’s Food Warehouse. People started to avoid those shopping centers.
Some victims were killed at gas stations. Which began to put up tarps around the pumps, so patrons would not feel like targets.
One woman was killed in a Home Depot parking lot.
You’ll recall an elementary school child was shot, in Bowie MD, and survived. And then the killers moved down to the Richmond VA area.
A man survived being shot in a Ponderosa steakhouse parking lot.
Halloween approached. Even though the shooters were caught before October 31, parents and kids stuck to parties rather than trick or treating that year. Notably sparse in the Richmond area.
That was a three-week killing spree, that put the DC and Virginia areas under severe stress.
The day before they were caught, I went to a movie in a strip shopping center that included both Michael’s Crafts and a Shoppers Food Warehouse. I remember dodging around among cars and zigzagging — as the TV news recommended — in the event a shooter was nearby. (Not likely, but not a zero possibility either.)
I remember I felt like prey. In a suburban parking lot. And that I was out there alone. No one was lingering in the lot or outside the stores.
Maybe you will get more serious gun legislation when enough people are scared of public places AND stop spending their money there.
Moolah trumps Moloch.
Trollhattan
@raven:
My bumper sticker answer is treat guns like tobacco products, as the health threat they clearly are. Growing up, most adults smoked. Today I think I know two smokers, maybe three.
I think it’s significant that while we’re awash in guns (what, 300M?) they’re owned by a shrinking proportion of the population.
Belafon
@raven: I suspect it started early 2009. It may have taken a lot of time for it to come out in the open, but I suspect the change started then. And I’m not saying racism for it’s own sake, but Obama’s election signaled the beginning of an end to automatic white privilege.
SatanicPanic
@Trollhattan: This is my answer too. An outright ban is probably unworkable at this point. But stopping the glorification of guns as magical freedom creators would be a huge improvement.
Kristin
@raven: I was about to say this very thing.
skerry
Wow. I made the front page. Sorry to hear about the incident with your daughter, Betty.
I’m still very angry about what happened last week with my daughter. She is taking it much better than I am. Her fiancé, currently active duty at Ft. Lewis, is pretty angry too. Like I said, we have not been a “gun-grabbing” family. But we are getting pushed by all the kooks.
I feel the need to do something positive with this anger beyond signing a petition. I am looking for something local (I’m in MD, suburban DC), someway to help. I am an easy commute to DC. Any ideas?
Also, the hero at SPU, Jon Meis, stopped the shooter with a can of pepper spray and then tackled him. He disarmed the shooter and with help of other students, held him until the police arrived. Jon is to be married later this month. People have already purchased everything he and his bride had listed on their registries and a fund was set up to help pay for a honeymoon. They had a goal of $5000. At last check, it had reached over $49,000. If you feel inclined, drop him something. I did. Hopefully, they can start their new life without student loans and with a nice little nest egg.
Brants
I live a few blocks from LA’s Valley College, and it’s currently on lockdown due to a rumored shooter or threat of shooter. Not the first time this year, either.
Alison
I try to be a positive person because it’s the only way I can cope with my life these days, but on this issue, I just can’t.
The gun nuts will always win, and they will never ever be shamed into backing down. They care more about their guns than they do about anyone else’s life, including toddlers. That’s not even opinion, it’s a fucking fact. They’re all Joe the fucking Plumber, they do not give one tiny solitary fuck about dead cops, dead grandmothers, dead children.
All they care about is their guns. And those fucking unicorns known as “responsible gun owners” – you know, all three of them in the whole country – are just not enough to counteract it, and sadly many of them sure seem to talk the talk but not want to walk the walk when it comes to helping do so.
realbtl
In my 12 years living here in Montana I have never seen anyone openly carrying despite the fact that everything comes to a grinding halt during hunting season. My guess is that such an individual would be treated like an ignorant shithead by the people who use their guns.
Steve from Antioch
The number of shooting deaths in this country has been declining steadily for quite some time.
The whole “lockdown the school” is a function of nut job school administrators, not an increase in gun violence.
If you keep getting mad at the wrong things, you’ll never fix the real problems.
SarahT
@The Other Chuck: A-fucking-men
Morzer
#NRAKillingAmerica’sChildrenToSellMoreGuns
Belafon
@Steve from Antioch: Isn’t it that while the number of shooting deaths has gone down, the number of mass shootings has gone up, which is tracking the rise in assault rifle ownership?
ETA: And I don’t consider it to be a bad thing to point out that some people are gun idiots, and really should not own one.
Ruckus
@realbtl:
That’s because their guns are tools. The nuts are tools with guns. And this is part of the problem. The nuts know they are deadly. They like that guns are deadly. They’ve been inundated with the idea that the only way to cure all the non problems that white people face is to kill anyone who disagrees.
So it’s not just racism, it’s how to protect the way to continue racism. Change the word racism to inequality and the same two sentences apply. Change the word racism to profit and they apply.
OzarkHillbilly
What makes you think, for even one second, that we can? Remember the editor of Guns and Ammo who wrote an editorial for stricter (what a joke that is) A MINIMUM set of gun laws and lost his job over it? Those people (I am being generous calling them people) ARE idiots in every sense of the word.
And when that day comes I will gladly hand them over.
skerry
@Steve from Antioch: So what do you think is the right thing to get mad at? Where should I focus my anger and energy?
chopper
@elmo:
indeed. the whole problem with the gun lovers’ framing of ‘good guys with a gun’ vs ‘bad guys with a gun’ is, what happens when we’re at the point where the rest of us are just as afraid of the ‘good guys’ as we are of the ‘bad guys’ because the ‘good guys’ are all a bunch of certifiable full-bore fucking loonies?
Trollhattan
A friend just emailed me five minutes ago with news that her colleague, a staff attorney missing since May, has been found by police, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot using a pistol he’d recently purchased. Nothing to add beyond echoing what epidemiologists and insurance actuaries already know: their very presence increases the probably of accidental death, suicide and murder at the hands of a family member.
Ramiah Ariya
One thing that I don’t understand – gun rights are held to be very absolute and unchangeable irrespective of anything else. Ok, that is fine.
But then why does the use of torture suddenly require a “ticking time-bomb” scenario? Why is that not absolute?
What about the “ticking crazy man with gun” scenario that should let government take everyone’s guns?
Surely if you can use ticking time bomb to justify torture or “agonize” over it, you should also consider the actual crazy men with guns and their effect on gun rights?
If the “ticking time bomb” can justify racial profiling, then why can’t a similar scenario be used to take away guns?
Belafon
@OzarkHillbilly: I thought a good guy with a gun could stop a bad guy with a gun (I know you didn’t say that, but bear with me). Is it worse than that?
OK, I know part of the answer: Most of the idiots with guns think they are the good guys, and don’t realize the damage they are doing.
Lihtox
It’s a real credit to the Left in this country, that we haven’t had any of our own gunmen, taking aim at Wayne LaPierre or the rest of the ammosexual crowd out of a warped sense of justice.
Restaurants in Stand-Your-Ground states should start posting signs: “if you carry a rifle in here, we will consider you a threat and act accordingly.”
David in NY
@Steve from Antioch: I have an old friend who was provost at a small college where a nutcase kid got some guns and killed some people before the administration had called the police (though they tried to gather kids in safe places). I think he must feel terrible about the result, and I don’t just mean because of the ensuing lawsuit. It’s no wonder the people who run institutions are what seems over-cautious. If they are under-cautious the results can be catastrophic.
schrodinger's cat
Is it my imagination or does the ratio of trolls to commenters go up on gun threads?
Morzer
@skerry:
My suggestion would be to build or join a group that can keep applying pressure to the politicians over the long haul.
burnspbesq
@SatanicPanic:
Someone posted a photo of three open-carry idjits in a fast-food joint to my Facebook page yesterday. My immediate reaction was ” these clowns are completely oblivious to their surroundings. If the camera that took this photograph were a gun, the photographer could kill them all, and they wouldn’t know about the threat until they were standing in front of St. Peter.”
Steve from Antioch
@skerry:
If you’re upset about what school lockdowns do psychologically to your children, you should confront the school board every time there is is an idiotic lockdown. Tell them that frightening children without a good reason is shameful.
If you are concerned about the number of people being killed by guns in this country, advocate for strict enforcement of current gun laws, urge funding of gun safety programs and providing free trigger locks to people, and any number of other, rational solutions.
The thing NOT to do is to go around screeching about getting rid of all guns, or conducting a personal vilification campaign against legal gun owners. The first is unconstitutional and impractical and the second feeds some personal self-esteem issues but does little to solve actual problems.
@Belafon:
I don’t think that is true – I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but I believe that the number of people killed by “assault rifles” in this country was actually lower than the number of people killed by blunt objects, like baseball bats.
Belafon
@David in NY: It’s the same reason guns are restricted at businesses: Lot’s of people are concentrated in one location.
gnomedad
The ammosexuals are into victimhood, so no matter what is permitted them they will push until they get a reaction.
Anoniminous
Ammosexuals WILL vote and they WILL vote against politicians pushing/passing sensible legislation. The majority of Americans don’t bother to vote in off-year and recall elections, so no politician is going to do a kamikaze into the Good Ship NRA.
Until that is changed nothing will change.
hoodie
Honestly, I think the thing that is most likely to turn the tide is the first tort suit that breaks through holding a manufacturer of military-style weapons liable for a mass shooting and extracting a huge payout for damages based on things like advertising aimed at encouraging paranoid behavior. Crazier things have happened, like finding a right for gay people to be married. The outrage of things like Sandy Hook tends to bolster that kind of action, kind of like folk’s direct experience with gay relatives and friends helped break down that legal barrier. Politicians didn’t make that happen.
the Conster
Bill Maher’s take on this issue was great, and he ended by making the point that the free market is doing more to restrict the ammosexuals than the laws are, one establishment at a time. If Home Depot is going to allow armed men to roam their aisles, then Lowe’s it is.
Amir Khalid
@burnspbesq:
“Standing in front of St Peter” is rather more credit for good intentions than some, myself included, might want to give such people.
Heliopause
With all due respect to Mr. Meis, what really stopped the bad guy with a gun was the fact that the gun was a shotgun. We’re taking the wrong lesson from this — something about pepper spray — and ignoring the real lesson; there’s no legitimate reason for “responsible gun owners” to fire more than 3-5 rounds at a time.
David in NY
Well, here’s the murderer at the Bundy ranch saying he doesn’t want violence: http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/06/09/3446421/murder-of-two-police-officers-fueled-by-racist-ideology/
Belafon
@Steve from Antioch: That’s not exactly what I said, though. I said that the number of mass shootings has increased, which coincides with the increase in assault rifles. I did not say that that there are more people dying from mass shootings than other reasons. Even if there were more from baseball bats, there are a whole lot more baseball bats in this country, and the ratio of deaths to baseball bats would be significantly lower than deaths to assault weapons.
japa21
Read Bateman over at Pierce’s place.
I have been overseas in Afghanistan and in NATO nations for half a decade while the insanity of the National Rifle Association expanded and exploded, and the NRA became, essentially, the tool of death in the United States. They made mass killings normal.
Well done, NRA. But this shit is too much.
Constant cop-killing, by people who echo the NRA talking points and the conspiracy theories of the Internet wackos.
So I will come home, and perhaps some of those 3,000 nutjobs who sent me hatemail might want to meet up, because I am more than fricking willing, you whining, little boy-toys who need guns. So many of you have threatened me that I am literally booked, but any of you who feel you have been left out, go ahead. Book a date. You bring your gun to try and convince me that you are not a complete and total idiot, and if you bring a gun, let us see which tool works best.
Wimps need guns. Come and get me.
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/i-am-coming-home
Trollhattan
@schrodinger’s cat:
We can always count on making a small set of new friends every time some badass with a gun expresses freedom via using it in a newsworthy fashion. Sandy Hook seemed to spawn an extra large cohort.
It would seem the NRA and the Russians have similar schemes WRT flying their freak flags in public forums.
David in NY
@Belafon: I agree. I was politely responding to this: “The whole “lockdown the school” is a function of nut job school administrators, not an increase in gun violence.”
SatanicPanic
@hoodie: IANAL but I believe there was a law passed during the Bush era shielding manufacturers from that kind of lawsuit
skerry
@Steve from Antioch: “screeching”? Fuck you
Thymezone
How far down this rabbit hole will we go before we must face up, as a country, to the fact that we have sold out our public safety to gun manufacturers and politicians who are in thrall to that special interest?
The current situation also rests on the fact that this special interest has convinced the country that the Second Amendment says something that it clearly does not say, which is, that every individual has a personal right to own, carry, and use any and all firearms he desires and is free to endanger the general population at his whim because his fake “right” trumps our right to public safety. This is a national crisis, and it is not going away any time soon.
patrick II
The NRA and gun lobby are making the opposite bet. When the majority of people have been affected directly, and government has been not only unable to restrict guns by law, but encourage them with laws like “stand your ground”, then people will find it necessary to protect themselves and buy their own gun.
The gun rights are part of a broader campaign to sow distrust in government and community solutions to give the illusion of safety through personal initiative rather than by community action through government. When we are each huddled alone in our own homes protected by just our (sold for profit) guns and defense systems, but compliant to corporations to earn the money to buy our guns and safety, things will be just they way they want them.
OzarkHillbilly
@Belafon: Oh we’ve already proven the lie of a “good guy with a gun”. Asst Principals in Georgia, hall monitors, just regular folks, oh and, as shown again in Vegas, also bad guys with guns are all more likely to stop bad guys with guns than good guys with guns. Somebody up thread said they are more afraid of the good guys than they are the bad guys. I don’t blame them. I am too. I don’t know why anybody thinks more bullets is going to improve such a situation.
RP
A-freaking-men, brother! Preach it! That I should live long enough to see the day…
Steve from Antioch
@skerry:
Sorry, I wasn’t saying that you were screeching.
Trollhattan
@David in NY:
Well there it is, isn’t it? They went there itching for a shootout and decided to stir one up on their own after the Avoider in Chief didn’t supply one at the Bundypallooza.
ETA: if reports of their wanting to “start a revolution” are accurate, they were exactly as smart as Charlie Manson.
Think I’ll direct my giving to the SPLC this year.
Paul in KY
@SatanicPanic: He’d have a Lamborghini SUV if it wasn’t for Obummer.
Benghazi!!!
Ruckus
@SatanicPanic:
Too much money to be made as merchants of death to let a little thing like responsibility to get in the way.
Steve from Antioch
I see. I though you meant to argue that the increase in “assault rifles” somehow caused the increase in number of mass shootings.
Laertes
@Steve from Antioch:
You’re demanding more polite treatment of gun nutters than they deserve on the merits. You’ll have to forgive those of us who are no longer in the mood to coddle these dangerous lunatics or their trying-and-failing-to-be-polite fellow travelers.
Paul in KY
@NonyNony: I posted this several days ago in another thread.
The big massacre back in Australia (41 or so murdered by madman) brought about the kind of gun control we need here.
Think about how big population of Australia is, and then think about our population size & you begin to see the kind of carnage there would have to be over here for our society to enact the laws enacted in Australia.
Betty Cracker
@Steve from Antioch: Horse shit. The 2nd Amendment can be interpreted in such a way as to vaporize your personal right to own a gun unless you’re in a state-run militia. Don’t believe me? Keep providing cover for these open carry idiots (or participating in such groups if that’s your thing) and support the NRA while they continue to stymie any common-sense gun safety measures in the face of overwhelming public support, and you’ll find out.
I think my kid’s school did the right thing. Someone who was exercising his 2nd Amendment rights had just murdered a man in broad daylight on the street and was heading in the direction of the school. They had minutes to make a decision. Does it suck that kids were scared? Yes. It also sucks that virtually any dickhead who can fog a mirror can walk around with a gun.
Trollhattan
@japa21:
Whoa. You go, soldier.
Elizabelle
Meet yesterday’s Las Vegas shooters, Jerad Dwain Miller and Amanda Miller, recently of Lafayette, Indiana, although Mr. Miller had numerous tangles with the law in Washington state.
It’s reported the Bundy Ranch folks declined to associate with Jarad Miller, due to his felony convictions. And that the Millers planned to attack a courthouse, too. From the Las Vegas Journal-Review:
Mnemosyne
@Steve from Antioch:
Sorry, too late. You “responsible gun owners” have failed to police your own or take responsibility for the world you created, and this is the result. Have fun down at Chipotle with your gun-stroking buddies as you whine about all of the meanies who just don’t understand why you have to have your gun erect and ready at all times, even at a children’s Little League field.
Think about that for a minute: do you understand why people might not want a guy with a gun wandering around near their children’s baseball game? Any clue at all why people might be alarmed by that? Or are we supposed to assume good intentions for every asshole with a gun until he actually starts shooting because, hey, it’s not like there’s a shooting every day in the US or something.
Laertes
@Betty Cracker:
Amen. Your school definitely did the right thing. It’s batshit insane to suggest otherwise. Gun nutters don’t seem to realize just how crazy they sound when they say that shit.
Lee Rudolph
@schrodinger’s cat:
Maybe, but at least so far this thread seems to still have few trolls. (But maybe I’m reading some posters more generously than you are.)
bemused
I live in rural MN. I never saw my parents generation carrying guns or rifles unless they were hunting deer, partridge, a dangerous dog or other critter. They would have been horrified at these gun fetish nuts. People who are glued to their guns don’t have their heads on straight.
Anoniminous
The Hammer and Baseball bat claim stems, in part, from Paul Broun, a Georgia state legislator who, btw, also thinks the earth is 9,000 years old. So his Cognitive abilities are suspect. (At best.)
According to the FBI there were “8,583 people were murdered with firearms in 2011. Only 496 people were killed by blunt objects, a category that includes not just hammers and baseball bats but crowbars, rocks, paving stones, statuettes, and electric guitars.” (cite)
Elizabelle
@Steve from Antioch:
Does your gun whisper back that it loves you, too?
Trollhattan
@Paul in KY:
Yup, they made wholesale changes, and under a very conservative PM, too. Speaking of Aussies and guns, we’re exporting the effects of our crazies.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-06-08/us-rush-on-guns-triggers-shooting-supplies-shortage/5507752
Think the NRA isn’t earning every nickel they extract from the manufacturers?
Trollhattan
@Anoniminous:
And sidewalks, don’t forget sidewalks.
–G. Zimmerman
Steve from Antioch
It can be interpreted that way. Can it be interpreted that way and be consistent with recent decisions by the Supreme Court? No.
Even if the heavens open up an rain down blessings on us allowing a democrat to be elected in 2016 and even if that person gets to appoint four justices, I would be a bit surprised if the Supreme Court reversed the past 3 or 4 rulings in 2018 or or so.
What are you talking about? I think open carry people are just that, idiots.
Okay, then you are getting the kind of school system you deserve.
Lee Rudolph
@Elizabelle:
Depending on their (work and/or drug) habits, they might not even have been to sleep yet.
Raven
@Anoniminous: soon to be replaced by Jody Hice who will be worse.
Belafon
@Anoniminous: thanks.
Paul in KY
@burnspbesq: St. Peter would be laughing his ass off.
Steve from Antioch
@Anoniminous:
I posted about deaths from “assault rifles” not “guns” in general. And, not that I recall there was some ambiguity in the numbers because there were a certain number of deaths caused by what appeared to be long gun caliber bullets where the weapon could not be located, so it was unclear if the weapon was an assault rifle or not.
In any event the number of deaths caused by assault rifles is pretty low, even if you throw in the unknowns. It’s on par with blunt objects and far fewer than handguns. Hence, another reason why the hop-hah about assault weapons is a bit misguided.
Paul in KY
@Amir Khalid: Can’t St. Peter point you to the ‘down’ elevator?
Mnemosyne
@Steve from Antioch:
And yet here you are defending them. After all, there’s no law against them carrying their guns wherever they want, so what’s your plan to get them to stop?
Anoniminous
@Raven:
Why am I not surprised?
@Trollhattan:
Arguing with gun freaks is like arguing with a door knob. (To steal a phrase.) I mostly don’t try but when someone trots out the tactic of intellectual context bait-and-switch I get irked.
ETA: @Belafon: You’re welcome.
Barry
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: “I am unable to understand a nation in which peaceful protestors are jailed and/or pepper sprayed while gun wielding insurrectionists are allowed to threaten federal officials and then walk away scot-free. ”
I encountered a term recently, ‘blindness in the right eye’. It was coined to describe the habit in the Weimar republic of the police, prosecutors and judges to let off right-wing terrorists.
That’s what we have here – if Bundy had been black or hispanic, he’d have been in prison long before this. If he and his wife had spouted off about owning guns when the feds told him to pay up or else, they’d have been dead. The ‘militia’ would have never ‘assembled’, because the case would have been a minor footnote.
In the strange event that it did come to that, they’d be crushed with maximum force, and anybody associated with them would be in deep trouble.
Betty Cracker
@Steve from Antioch: What should the principal have done after the resource officer informed him that a man was shot multiple times in the street less than a mile away and the armed murderer is headed in the direction of the campus? What would your sage advice be in such a situation?
SatanicPanic
@bemused: there’s kind of a rough resemblance to how hipsters take items of working class life and fetishize them- drinking PBR or craft grill cheese sandwiches. Some yearning for authenticity I guess. And trying to graft working class gender roles onto middle class suburban life. I grew up in a rural area myself, and I knew people who were very proud of their guns, but that was because they were expensive hunting tools- “I can shoot a deer from a mile away with this one”. There wasn’t so much this idea that guns made you manly- outdoor work made you manly, whereas a gun was something anyone could just go out and buy. Not so different from a shovel. At least I don’t remember people running around in camo gear like clowns.
Barry
@Comrade Dread: “It would take the monster the NRA and GOP have created, coddled, and nurtured turning on them before they’ll move on anything resembling gun control legislation.
It’s okay for other people to die for Moloch, but when the anti-government Neoconfederate psychos start demanding their blood, I expect a come to Jesus moment on the issue. ”
The first mass shooting involving the 1% (or the 1% of the 1%) would likely be the last. The media would have a pivot of a speed and magnitude last seen on 9/11.
Steve from Antioch
@Mnemosyne: Please post a link to any post where I have defended open carry idiots.
Please try responding to what I post instead of what the voices in your head are saying.
Thanks.
pseudonymous in nc
This is the America that the NRA and its gun-pushing paymasters dreams of.
Now, do people actually want that?
Mnemosyne
@hoodie:
As SatanicPanic said, gun manufacturers and dealers are immune from being sued for how their weapons are used or advertised. Until that Bush-era law is repealed, your vision can never happen, because any lawsuit would be immediately dismissed.
Mnemosyne
@Steve from Antioch:
The open carry idiots are acting completely legally. You said all we need to do to stop them is to enforce the gun laws we already have. So what’s your proposal to get them to stop acting like idiots since they’re not doing anything illegal?
But, hey, I guess those parents in Georgia should have let their kids’ Little League game go ahead because the guy wandering around with a rifle might not shoot anyone.
NonyNony
@Steve from Antioch:
You clearly don’t understand how public reaction works.
If the responsible gun owners don’t start proposing some regulation of their own people, and continue to side with the nutters who want to push for unfettered open carry, minimal background checks, and everything else that they’re pushing for, then eventually enough of these nuts going on mass shootings WILL cause a backlash. It may not happen until 60% of the population personally knows someone gunned down in a massacre, but as the number of guns in the hands of whack-a-loons increases the probability of that happening continues to rise.
If you guys – and I’m assuming given your defenses here you consider yourself one of the responsible gun owners – don’t get your shit together and police your own then this WILL happen. You will find yourself at the butt-end of public opinion where people have been pushed too far and hurt too much and they will start pushing back at that point.
You need to regulate the nuts in your tree if you want to keep up your hobby.
Mnemosyne
@NonyNony:
This right here. The denial and deflection by supposedly “responsible” gun owners and the demand that other people do something really makes me sick at this point.
If you don’t want your guns yanked away, you’d better do something to police the gun nuts that are making you look bad.
Trollhattan
@Anoniminous:
Know what you mean. Post-Sandy Hook, when the question of “what to do” came up I noted that were I President for Life I’d be significantly shortening the list of weaponry available to civilians. One of our new gun fondler friends wanted specifics and I started with 50cal anything. He countered–I kid you not–salmon fishermen in Alaska needed 50 cal guns for bear protection.
There is literally no weapon for which they don’t have at least one fantasy scenario, ergo, no weapon of any kind can be withheld. Not one.
bemused
@SatanicPanic:
They treated guns with respect just as they would with another piece of dangerous equipment they used such as power saws. My generation, close to retirement age and younger people do that too, at least those that are adult and rational.
Hell, these open carry exhibitionists might as well sling a power saw over their shoulders and strut around town, start it up in a Chipolte or Walmart for fun and intimidation.
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
Problem is your kids are being scared of the wrong people. The good gun people are trying to protect us all from the baddies. Of course we don’t agree with their ideas of baddies nor their methods to reduce same. And while we understand that collateral damage to our kids, us, our, well everything is not acceptable, they think it’s a feature not a bug.
Trollhattan
I’d completely missed this, last week.
http://www.wmbfnews.com/story/25698439/real-gun-found-in-toy-aisle
RSA
@NonyNony:
From an article about Open Carry Texas:
So, yeah, deluded and dangerous, and remarkably stupid.
Barry
@Ramiah Ariya: “One thing that I don’t understand – gun rights are held to be very absolute and unchangeable irrespective of anything else. Ok, that is fine.
But then why does the use of torture suddenly require a “ticking time-bomb” scenario? Why is that not absolute?”
Because (a) most of those arguments were 100% bullsh*t, and (b) the advocates wanted a restoration of the old historical norms that torture was OK.
Steve from Antioch
@Mnemosyne:
Do you have a link to where I was defending open carry idiots? I really don’t see any reason to engage you if you just make crap up and attribute it to me and then, when called on it, just try to change the subject.
You’re absolutely right. I frequently argue with fellow gun owners that we should have some kind of secure gun purchaser ID system. Their objection, and it is not invalid, is that would just be used for confiscation purposes if gun laws become more restrictive. My counter argument is that given that big data mining can tell with virtually certainty what kind of toothpaste you buy, the government won’t need a database if it ever starts confiscating guns.
But the “background check” we have now is a joke. You just check off various boxes stating that you have not been locked up of mental problems and that you are not a user of illegal drugs. So everybody has to lie if they smoke pot. Then they run a general search for criminal convictions. All in all, considerably easier to get a gun than a driver’s license unless you are a felon (and your felony was in a state that keeps good records.) That’s silly.
skerry
@Steve from Antioch: Talking about “assault rifles” vs other firearms is throwing out a red herring. Just like arguing over where the term “assault rifle” is valid or not. Who gives a shit? Mass shootings since Newtown, since Columbine have used a variety of weapons.
The guy in Seattle had a shotgun. Killed one student, one is fighting for her life, and two suffered non-life threatening injuries. The shooter was stopped when he had to reload.
I haven’t heard what the “revolutionaries” in Las Vegas used Sunday. Read that the wife owned a .38 pistol and an AR-1 rifle. Not sure about hubby. Doesn’t make those 3 victims any less dead.
Shooter in Florida yesterday killed his wife, 3 kids and then himself. Don’t care what caliber gun he used. Dead family.
The shooter in Isla Vista had multiple guns – two Sig Sauer p226 model handguns and a Glock 34 – as well as 34 loaded 10-round magazines for the Sig Sauers and seven 10-round magazines for the Glock. 6 dead innocents.
In any case, we’d have reliable statistics on type of weapon and number killed if the NRA would stop blocking legislation to fund the CDC to collect and study the data.
Aimai
@Elizabelle: moolah trumps moloch deserves to be noted.
low-tech cyclist
@Steve from Antioch:
No, they haven’t.
Let me add that the number of gun deaths per year is in the same ballpark as the number of deaths annually from (a) automobile accidents, and (b) liver disease. Guess we shouldn’t waste any energy on those, either!
patrick II
@Steve from Antioch:
After Sandy Hook, a town police force near me spent a quarter of a million dollars to upgrade their weaponry to add assault rifles so that they would not be outgunned in a confrontation. I assume our local police force is not the only one and that Sandy Hook, far from being a bad thing for the NRA and gun manufacturers, has increased their profits greatly. Regardless of the actual number of deaths from assault rifles, it has increased the arms race between a subset of the citizenry and the police and heightened tensions. We get upset with the militarization of the police, but in the new worse case scenario for police and federal officials, they may come up against groups of people armed with assault rifles and that changes both the attitudes and danger for the police. And heightens tension and increases fear for the rest of us.
But it’s ok, because assault rifles are very profitable for gun companies.
David in NY
@Ruckus: I didn’t get traumatized for the half-dozen to dozen times there was a bomb scare in my school and we had to evacuate, and I think the principal had to order evacuation because, well, there are crazy people out there. So I think Betty’s school absolutely had to deal with the situation in the way it did, because people running around with guns kill people. And I think this all the more because, as I mentioned above, I know an administrator who did not act quickly enough in such a situation, and somebody ended up dead.
So you need to get your category of “baddies” and “goodies” straight, and understand the responsibilities of people who are in charge of the lives of hundreds of children. You obviously have no clue.
Thymezone
“Open carry Texas” is some crazy shit, but it’s not that much crazier than a state that lets a fertilizer plant break every safety regulation in the book, and blow itself and half of a town with it, and then does essentially nothing about it.
The free market of ideas works great, until the ideas become crazy, and then it doesn’t work. At some point the non-crazy people have to take over.
I think the tipping point is approaching, but I am not sure how quickly. At this point we are looking in the window and seeing the pigs play cards with the bad people, and shaking our heads. At some point, action will follow, it’s just a question of how many more kids, pregnant women, store clerks, cops, students, and others must die before that happens.
Steve from Antioch
@skerry: I was responding to a specific post that appeared to attributed the rise in mass shooting to the rise in assault rifle ownership. So no it is not a red herring, I was responding to something that somebody had written.
The FBI has pretty good stats as is and it’s clear that handguns clearly kill more people than any other type of firearm: http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-8
Morbo
Los Angeles says hello. Sigh.
Steve from Antioch
@low-tech cyclist:
You’re right in simple numbers. But the number per 100K citizens is clearly trending down.
Aimai
@Steve from Antioch: no its not.
David in NY
@low-tech cyclist: Thank you.
The point of your graph is even more significant than that. Note how great the decline in automobile deaths has been, all achieved by technological means such as seat belts, airbags, and improving automobile structure — all factors that impede on the “freedom” of people and, more, by making them pay for the improvements.
As to guns, not so much. The gun nuts and gun manufacturer’s lobby (NRA) oppose all regulation of guns that would make the public safer. That’s crazy.
JaneE
Less than half an hour ago the tv had a live feed of some nut who led police on a chase over the freeways, then got out of his car with what looked like an assault rifle and started walking through a residential neighborhood. He is still on the loose.
Mnemosyne
@Steve from Antioch:
You said you want current gun laws to be enforced. There is NO LAW PREVENTING OPEN CARRY IN GEORGIA, so the guy carrying his rifle around the Little League field was legally able to do so. So now what is your plan to take care of the “open carry idiots”?
I have asked this question several times and you refuse to answer. Why is that?
David in NY
@Steve from Antioch: “But the number per 100K citizens is clearly trending down.”
But not nearly so much as the number of automobile deaths. Why? Because of good people like you, that’s why.
gbear
@Steve from Antioch:
You know, that is way up there with the most clueless, thoughtless statements I’ve seen in the last couple days, and the competition has been really fierce. Wow. You really do not have a clue.
Mnemosyne
@Steve from Antioch:
And yet that’s all the current law allows. Stronger background checks are currently illegal. The system is specifically designed to make it easier to get a gun permit than a driver’s license.
So, again, please explain how “strict enforcement of current gun laws” will solve these problems.
Thymezone
The best thing to have when you are threatened by a drunk guy with a car, is a sober guy with a car.
Funny, isn’t it? Heh. The sober people will protect you from the drunk drivers.
So the solution to drunk driving is … more cars, and more beer.
Steve from Antioch
@patrick II: I am very much opposed to the militarization of the police. Mainly because when you look at the numbers the chance of police encountering an assault weapon are very small. I think it is driven more by police attitudes than any realistic assessment of threats. A police department near me got not one but two APCs. Sure they were “free” but the upkeep costs money and now they are looking for reasons to use them.
The police department in that same city used to train and shoot at a gun range where I am a range officer. Recently, they built their own gun range complete with a “scenario house” so they could practice breaching and clearing rooms. Mind you, this is a jurisdiction that had 3 homicides last year and none the year before that.
Were it up to me, most police officers would be unarmed.
LongHairedWeirdo
You know, the AR15 into food places… I’m a firm believer that guns are a tool. You bring a claw hammer into a restaurant, I figure you’re busy hammering some nails, and are going to get back to it. Your bring a side arm into a restaurant, I figure you have some dangerous situation that you can’t avoid, and may need to access a firearm in an emergency.
But an AR15 was designed for tactical use. They’re modified designs of rifles intended to take into a literal war zone. You don’t look like someone who might have to pound some nails in, or someone who might find a dangerous situation due to your profession. You look like someone planning on fighting, because that is the nature of the tool you are carrying. And it’s not in the trunk of your car, or cased, where you might be transporting it somewhere for target shooting.
It might be legal just as some truly obnoxious speech is illegal, but that’s about all it is.
Steve from Antioch
@Mnemosyne:
You said I was defending open carry idiots. That is simply not true.
You could have just admitted that you got overly excited and attributed positions to me that were incorrect. Instead you are just doubling down which means that you are just dishonest.
Grow up.
skerry
@David in NY: I don’t have any stats in front of me to prove it, but I’d put out there that some of the decline in death due to automobiles is attributable to the changes in both law and attitude about drunk driving. I know in my driving life-time that there has been a huge shift in what is socially acceptable as well as the lowering of legal alcohol limits and judicial action towards people driving after drinking. I’m sure that has helped along with the vast improvement in safety technology.
(My first car was a 1964 Corvair. Not the world’s safest vehicle. When I owned it (late 1970s), it was still legal in Indiana to have open containers while driving – just “not the driver”. Things have changed.)
My point being along with changes in current law, we need to see changes in what is socially acceptable about gun ownership and usage. I remember the fights against MADD, but they prevailed. I think we are going to experience a similar thing wrt firearms.
Ruckus
@skerry:
It’s way past time to worry if people are “responsible gun owners.” Because they are not being responsible gun owners. Their sport/lifestyle/fetish is being taken over by idiots and morons and they are doing nothing about it. At least nothing obvious. The current one on this thread sounds like burns, “It’s legal! Shut Up!”. The point isn’t he may be correct, the point is the time has come to change and make this illegal. But even if he is 100% correct that gun deaths are down, that mass shootings are down, that is a relative statistic showing a trend. But the trend is happening way too slow because there are still way too many. And while there may be more than one way to get there, the fastest is gun control.
Paul in KY
@LongHairedWeirdo: It’s also completely stupid, as someone pretending to be in line for a frappe can coldcock the idiot & take the gun & now a criminal is armed with 21st century military weaponry.
Is this a great country or what?!
Steve from Antioch
@LongHairedWeirdo:
Agreed.
Gun manufacturers have really been pushing ARs as “hunting guns” in the past few years. I just don’t understand that. It might be generational, but I grew up looking down on people who used semi-autos for hunting because it meant they probably didn’t make their first shot count.
pseudonymous in nc
Steve from Antioch’s concern is noted.
tesslibrarian
@raven: We might have overlapped at Big City on a random morning. Not that I’m usually up that early, but for a long time, we’ve been regulars there for lunch, sometimes dinner. Mornings are not my best time of day.
I did see your Boomer interview! But a side effect of working at the library is not being able to place people outside of its walls. As someone who primarily does local history and genealogy, I’d see people I really thought I knew around town, then only realize after awhile that I don’t know *them,* I know all about the great-great-grandparents I helped them find. Librarianship can be weird.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
You know the thing I hate most about the ‘Good guy with a gun’ argument? Much like with any crime, gun owners tend to be ‘good guys with guns’ until they suddenly aren’t. Sure, you have career criminals that get armed, and that’s not something to ignore, but then you have incidents with people who before the crime happened seemed to be ‘good guys with guns’ types before hand, and only get tarred as ‘bad guys with guns’ in hindsight. When does the tipover happen though? Do we just force ourselves to think that these guys were always just ‘bad guys with guns’? That’s what we’re supposed to do it seems.
But like others have said, figuring out who the ‘good guy’ and ‘bad guy’ in a situation is extremely fickle. It’s worse in the heat of an incident, but it’s still there even when you’re just considering ‘this guy has a gun, he doesn’t SEEM to be making any moves, but that thing is still a fucking gun’. Like the Open Carry Texas idiots. When you see someone who has a gun, it’s stupid to not consider it loaded, and consider it dangerous, even when the person carrying it seems to be responsible and not trying to thrust the damn thing into everyone’s faces.
And even outside of direct situations like that, you have shit that prevents us from being judicious in who should actually own or gun or not, with restrictions being loosened more and more damn near everywhere, all in the sake of that sacred 2nd Amendment. We’re told we can’t prevent bad guys with guns from getting said guns because it’d infringe on allowing good guys with guns from owning them. The problem is, not every ‘good guy’ is qualified to own a gun, and the assholes make it harder and harder to find out who would potentially be a ‘bad guy with a gun’ before the fact because, you know, background checks are a step away from Fascism or some shit.
Everyone is a law abiding citizen until they’re suddenly not. Everyone is a ‘good guy with a gun’ until they’re suddenly not. Trying to use the ‘responsible gun owners’ dodge to excuse doing nothing, or even loosening or eliminating what minimal restrictions we have left is bullshit since it assumes responsibility in perpetuity. It ignores how guns by their very nature are dangerous fucking things. We tend to restrict very dangerous things even when people of reasonable responsibility handle them because of how inherently dangerous they are. Why are guns so exempt as to be deserving of no responsibility whatsoever far as determining ownership?
Betty Cracker
@Steve from Antioch: Since you were a condescending prick about the school system, maybe you could answer my question about what the principal should have done instead. Since you’re all about being grown up and honest.
Trollhattan
@skerry:
All of what you mentioned plus today’s cars are remarkable in their abiltiy to protect life in a crash, and much better at crash avoidance to begin with. What if we were to develop a “smart” gun that eliminated accidents? Why, I’ll bet…oopsie!
It’s like car buyers picketing Toyota, demanding they remove seat belts, air bags, crumple zones, collapsing steering wheels, headrests and the myriad other safety devices the government imposed on manufacturers.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Much like the claims of “the moderate Muslims need to take it to the fundies” or “the moderate Christians need to stop the fundies from giving them such a bad name”, well, same here. Ridiculous notion.
The fact is there are more loonies than sane, and that is especially true in the world of the gun owner. Fundamentalism is warm and comforting and gives you reason for living, purpose, and a defined place. Which most folks desperately need, hence the attraction.
I know quite a few gun owners, and of that not small group, maybe one or two would be willing to consent to ANY gun control legislation. The rest are “all guns all the time”. You won’t be able to talk sense to them, or change their minds, because they were done thinking about it after that one time when some dark-skinned dude scared the shit out of them. The only thing that will cure this is that they all have to die off and not be replaced, and that’s going to take a few decades.
Ruckus
@David in NY:
Please re read.
I think you will find that I am agreeing with Betty. If needed I can spell it out for you even better. So I will.
Guns have to go.
Schools and public places have to take the safe route here for the simple reason that guns are killing devices, nothing more, nothing less. Killing is the sole reason they exist. They are not a deterrent, seeing more of them is not a comfort, people who carry them are assholes.
Is that clear enough?
Bubblegum Tate
@Heliopause:
It’s the Dwight Schrute Conundrum:
“Jim is my enemy. But it turns out that Jim is also his own worst enemy. And the enemy of my enemy is my friend. So Jim, is actually my friend. But, because he is his own worst enemy, the enemy of my friend is my enemy, so actually, Jim is my enemy. But–“
pseudonymous in nc
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik:
At which point their membership of Responsible Gun Ownerz LLC is retroactively rescinded and everyone denies they were ever a Responsible Gun Owner™.
Ruckus
@pseudonymous in nc:
That’s a great catch, that catch 22.
Greatest there is.
Trollhattan
At which point their membership of Responsible Gun Ownerz LLC is retroactively rescinded and everyone
denies they were ever a Responsible Gun Owner™.calls them a liberal facist false-flagianDavid in NY
@Ruckus: OK. I must have misread. I’m sorry.
Southern Beale
So apparently the good guy with a gun did not, in fact, stop the bad guys with the guns. He just got blown away along with everyone else.
NRA talking point FAIL.
Thymezone
Responsible gun owners are going to rein in nutty gun owners? You mean, like the NRA reined them in?
Steve from Antioch
@Betty Cracker:
If you think the principal did the right thing, why do you care what I think?
But since you seem to really want to know, let me ask you a few questions so I can give you a good answer.
-How many shooting occur with a mile or two of this school every year? If you are in a high crime area like some parts of, say, Chicago, the school would have to be locked down quite a few days every year which seems counter productive.
-Are there armed guards at the school? Are they able to cover entrances to school or is the only way to “protect” children is to keep them indoors.
-Has there ever been an instance in your community – ever – of someone shooting a third party and then traveling a mile to a school and shooting children there? If that is the sort of thing that happens from time to time in your community, then a lockdown might be justified.
-where did the information about the shooter and his direction of travel come from?
– how many times a year are schools “locked down” in your school district? Is there any relationship between threat level and lockdown policy?
– was there any known link between the shooter and the school.
I would think that all of these things – except maybe the last one – would have been immediately known to the principal when s/he was making the lockdown decision.
Ruckus
@David in NY:
No worries, I was being a tad snarky at the start, but I felt that reading all the way through would show that up pretty easily. That and the number of comments I’ve made on BJ about guns, gun nuts, “responsible gun owners”, etc, etc. I’ll be clearer and more to the point in the future.
Mnemosyne
@Steve from Antioch:
You keep avoiding my question, Steve: since open carry is legal, what do you propose to do with “existing gun laws” to stop it?
Since I have asked the question four times and you have refused to answer it every time, the only logical conclusion is that you don’t want to stop the open carry idiots and, in fact, support them. What other conclusion am I supposed to draw since you refuse to answer my question?
skerry
@Trollhattan: Totally agree.
Also, the licensing requirements for a driver today in Maryland are much more restrictive than when I received mine. I can’t attest for a nationwide trend, but my youngest just got her license this year. When compared to her oldest sibling (10 year difference, same state), she had to receive much more instruction and time behind the wheel before she was eligible to even take the driving exam. She is now on a severely restricted license with graduated lessening of the restrictions. She just this week can drive with a non-family member in the car with her (5 month restriction).
In Indiana in 1976, to get my driver’s license, I didn’t even have to take a road test since I had taken driver’s ed at my high school. My only restriction was I needed to wear glasses. Didn’t even have my picture on the license. Things change.
Restrictions on gun ownership and usage need to be increased. Like I said in my original rant, keep long guns at a range. Don’t walk around with any firearm. Concealed carry permits are a joke. Other countries do it. We can do it here too. Make a person show proficiency before they purchase. Register every single gun. Track sales. Limit magazine size. No more stand your ground.
The tipping point is near. More and more of us have been personally touched by the kooks. We are growing in number daily. Change will happen.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@Southern Beale:
Another reason to shit on the ‘good guys with guns’ idiocy: what happens if the good guy with a gun, heaven forbid, fails and dies? Now the bad guys with guns have even more guns to work with!
Good guys are not infallible, and not all of them will be able to resolve a situation, even if they’re not blind firing assholes.
Sometimes, good guys lose. This isn’t fucking Die Hard or Rambo or any other schmaltzy action movie with self-affirming ‘might makes right, good guys will always win’ moral stories. John McClanes appeal to us BECAUSE they’re fiction, not because we’re supposed to believe they exist perfectly as portrayed in the movies.
NonyNony
@Steve from Antioch:
You clearly have not had kids in a school when a shooter has been roaming the neighborhood, have you?
I have – white suburban neighborhood where a gun nut decided he’d had enough of his wife and kids and shot them all, then got into a standoff with the cops. It finally ended with the guy offing himself. He lived about six blocks from the elementary school.
Principal locked the school down because the cops said “lock the school down – we’ve got a nut and we don’t know what he might do.” It was absolutely the right call to make, and I don’t doubt that every principal in the same situation would do exactly the same thing.
You want to second guess the principal and the cops go right ahead. But after Sandy Hook if there’s an armed nut in the neighborhood of a school and that school doesn’t go into lockdown the blood of every child killed by that nut will be on the principal’s head. So go ahead and pat yourself on the back that you’re so “reasonable” while you’re second guessing the professionals who actually put their lives on the line with these nutjobs.
Ruckus
@Steve from Antioch:
A link between the shooter and the school? Fucker was in the immediate neighborhood. On the loose with a fucking gun. Had already shot it at people.
Can you really be this dense?
some guy
Vilify them, publish their names and addresses, their phone numbers, run ads against them in the local town paper.
Full page ads listing all registered gun owners “These gun owners may one day murder your children, will you wait until they pull the trigger?”
List those with long guns: “These assault rifle owners could kill everyone in your child’s school in minutes, long before police arrive. Why are they allowed in our city?”
Vilify, vilify, vilify. make the “responsible gun owners” responsible for the atrocities committed by their fellow gun owners. All of them Push for gun buybacks, push for bans on any gun that can shoot more than two bullets without being reloaded. push to tax ammunition at $25 a bullet.
There is plenty of work to be done.
Ferd of the Nort
If you have a photograph of just you and your favourite gun…
You might be an ammosexual.
***********
If you need more than 3 guns…
you might be an ammosexual.
***********
If, outside your job, you NEED to handle a gun more than once a day…
You might just be an ammosexual.
Mnemosyne
@Steve from Antioch:
It had never happened before in Sandy Hook. But, hey, what are 20 dead first graders and 6 dead adults when up against your FREEEEEDDDDOOOMMMM!!!
Here’s what you enable, Steve. Bask in it. And then tell us again that 20 dead first-graders aren’t a big deal because it doesn’t happen all that often.
Ruckus
@Ferd of the Nort:
Foxworthy’s bit here is a short putt. It’s not that they may be…. They are….
SatanicPanic
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik: If you replace “good guys with guns” with “white males with guns” then it all makes sense.
David in NY
@skerry: Maybe so. That’s an interesting curve for the automobile deaths. The gross number was about the same, 50-55,000, for years, until 1979, when the charge begins. Then there are a couple of big drops, the last a sharp one relatively recently. I’m not sure what, if anything, they correlate with, but you may be right that there have been attitudinal changes that explain some of the drop and that if similar changes occurred (that’s the hard part) with respect to guns, there might be similar declines.
debit
@Steve from Antioch: Still not answering the question, dickhead. Don’t bother to reply, as I have a suspicion it will be about pie.
David in NY
@Ruckus: Your clarification was sufficient that I didn’t go back to check where I went wrong, but my snark detector must have been turned off.
Mnemosyne
@Ruckus:
As far as I know, there still has not been a demonstrated link between the Sandy Hook shooter and the school, though it was rumored early on. As far as anyone can tell, he went to that school and shots those kids because he wanted to kill people.
So already Steve’s list is completely useless for preventing another Sandy Hook. But he doesn’t seem particularly interested in preventing more deaths, just in dodging blame.
some guy
this is why we can’t have nice things anymore. Assholes make this statement with a straight face regularly, like their gun fetishism is A-OK because, hey, their are armed guards at our kids schools.
Hey fuckhead, Elementary school kids SHOULD NOT NEED armed guards, and it’s only because of stupid gun fetishists that they do, in fact, need them.
Belafon
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Considering this has flared up over the past few decades only when a Democrat is president, what the folks are wanting is to force their own way, and what better way than a tool whose only purpose is to kill.
Arclite
I dunno, if you couldn’t even get background checks implemented after Sandy Hook, when 95% of Americans supported it, I don’t see how anything changes for the better. There’s no act more horrific that a gunman can do than what happened at Sandy Hook, yet nothing changed. Nothing.
Also, here’s Bill Maher’s Ammosexual rant the other day. So funny.
Ferd of the Nort
@Ruckus: Yes they are, but a bit of ridicule never hurts.
Note gun owning Canadian here. Never posed with a gun. Only have a polar bear shotgun. Have not had it out for last 2 years.
gbear
The guy who got shot in the Walmart stores had been sold on the NRA’s ‘good guy with a gun’ bullshit, and it cost him his life.
Arclite
@some guy: There actually was an armed guard at Columbine when that shit went down. He was a former police officer. Had guns and training. Made little difference, if any.
Steve from Antioch
@some guy:
Oh I agree with that. Armed guards at schools are as much about security theatre as school lockdowns.
I was just asking some questions so I could answer the question about what I thought the principal should have done . . .
Arclite
What I really don’t understand is how this:
Became this:
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Belafon: While I completely agree that these people “want to force their own way”, the horrific truth is that, while this does “flare up” under Dems, the real dirty work, the years of arming these dolts up, the legal shenanigans rescinding/gutting any legislation that might conceivable inconvenience them, and the bushels of fundraising junk mail getting those anti-Dem talking points out there, gets done under GOP presidents.
The NRA has never sent me fundraising mail during Dem administrations. Only GOP ones. Gotta keep the heat on the pressure cooker, you know.
gogol's wife
@low-tech cyclist:
“Steve from Antioch” bears a striking resemblance to Chet and Glocklover and various other trolls who show up on the gun threads. They’re always calm and reasonable, they always claim to want to help solve the problem, and they always derail the thread and tamp down the righteous anger.
some guy
I think a campaign of vilification and belittlement is seriously the way to go. The Big lie is that there is such a thing as a “responsible” gun owner. No. There are gun owners, period.
Gun Owners kill schoolkids.
Gun Owners kill cops.
Gun Owners threaten us all.
some guy
@gogol’s wife:
agree, which is why when an NRA troll says “the last thing we should do is…” it means that is actually the first and most important thing we should do. We need to make clear to every single gun owner in America that they are responsible for Sandy Hook, they are responsible for two dead cops in Vegas, they are responsible for countless other senseless and brutal murders. Them, personally.
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne:
Steve’s list is just as short on specifics as he is. It’s not about “responsible gun ownership”, it is about his phallic symbols and anyone’s attempt to remove them. That’s why he or anyone else can’t debate anyone about this because there is no rational need for what they are selling. And they know it as well as we do.
gogol's wife
@some guy:
Yep.
Steve from Antioch
@gogol’s wife:
I can see why you would find a calm and reasonable poster to be so distressing.
some guy
@Steve from Antioch:
should Open Carry laws be repealed, for the good of the public? yes or no?
Betty Cracker
@Steve from Antioch: You’re right: I don’t really give a crap what you think, but I was hoping to expose your cluelessness on the situation, and you delivered. So thanks for that.
I don’t know how many shootings occur near schools in our district. Not that many, I suspect, since it’s semi-rural and not a high crime area. My kid’s middle school was on lockdown a couple of years back (another felon with a gun at large in the neighborhood); that plus Friday’s incident makes two lockdowns in 10 years of schooling that I know about.
I do not know if the murderer had any ties to the school, and I doubt very much the principal or sheriff had that information at the time. The principal was told by the armed sheriff’s deputy who is assigned to that school about the armed murderer roaming in the vicinity and made the only sensible choice, in my opinion.
I’m guessing the vast majority of parents would agree with me, but we’re just hysterical screechy moms who are unreasonably afraid of your guns, amirite? Nothing to see here. Move along.
Cassidy
The only way we get him legislation is if enough of these ammosexuals sack up and start the civil war they so desperately want. Getting to the aftermath to get said legislation would be unpleasant.
Steve from Antioch
@some guy:
That just makes you look foolish and makes it easier to dismiss your concerns.
Lets see, the best way to focus public sentiment is to focus derision on as large a group as possible — is that the theory here? That’s kind of the opposite of how political strategy actually works, isn’t it?
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne:
Annnd he’s still deflecting. If bullshit could stop bullets then Steve might be on to something. Too bad bullshit is not that capable. Of course the only way Steve might be able to stop bullets is to stand in front of them. I wonder how he’d like that? I still think even with that heart warming thought, I’ll go for the guns instead, Steve might be busy in another part of town, pooping his legacy.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@some guy: As a lifelong gun owner, I could not agree more. Do any of you think that the NRA describes you as “people to be trusted” when they’re sending out their fundraising newsletters? Ha.
I got news for you if you think that’s the case. It is Gun Owners Vs. America as far as they are concerned. And they are in it to win it.
Preach it. I’ll be using that little gem.
ETA: dickhead up above is very concerned about your stratagem. I think you could find no greater assurance that this is a good idea.
some guy
@Steve from Antioch:
nice non-answer. Let’s try another one, to see how you dodge it.
Should large capacity ammunition magazines be legal, yes or no?
Gin & Tonic
@Steve from Antioch: Since we’re all being calm and reasonable here, I’m sure I’ll agree that your liability insurance and life insurance rates should be far higher than those I pay, since you own guns and I don’t, and the overwhelming majority of firearm deaths are in homes where there are guns.
Morzer
@Steve from Antioch:
As a reasonable and moderate poster and in the spirit of bipartisan compromise, I propose that gun owners should be allowed to purchase any weapon or clip they like, provided they agree to shoot themselves in the balls with it and any subsequent purchases of either weapons or ammo.
Steve from Antioch
@Betty Cracker:
II it were my decision if there were an armed deputy on campus as you say and if there were a way to have him secure the entrances to the school without a lockdown (you did not answer that question) the I would not have locked down the school. I would have had the deputy secure the entrance and I would have stood by ready to order a lockdown if the shooter actually showed up at the school.
Kids are pretty resilient but locking the school down probably did scare quite a few kids and that level of harm outweighs the minuscule threat posed by the shooter.
You’re probably right that most parents would agree with you. That’s unfortunate. Just like most people think that its fine and dandy to force everyone to take off their shoes and put their toothpaste in little special baggies before getting on airplanes. Yes, there is a tiny chance that somebody might have a bomb in their shoe – but realistically assessing threats and weighing them against inconvenience and other dangers created by the security theatre is what adults should do.
Steve from Antioch
@Ruckus: Ruckus – if you have a question, I’ll try to answer it. I am done responding to mnomysine because she’s just dishonest.
Mnemosyne
@Steve from Antioch:
Yes, there’s nothing more reasonable than making excuses for the deaths of 20 first-graders. Strangely, most people find the death of even one child — much less 20 at one time — to be a time for emotion, not for calm.
If you’re “calm and reasonable” after 20 first-graders are shot to death inside their school, you might be a sociopath.
Mnemosyne
@Steve from Antioch:
In other words, you don’t want to do anything to stop the open carry idiots from doing their thing, so you’ll just refuse to answer the question and pretend it was dishonest for me to say that you don’t want to stop the open carry idiots. Gotcha.
Steve from Antioch
@some guy: How do you define a “large capacity magazine”?
@Gin & Tonic: Sure, assuming that actuarially correct. I wonder why that is not the case? When I got quotes for my homeowners and umbrella they did not change the rates when I submitted the documentation for the riders itemizing my firearms and photography equipment. Well, it did affect the rates but it was just based on the dollar value of the items, not any associated increase in perceived liability.
Gian
Steve… are you doing this pro malo publico or are you a paid shill?
Is there a weapon of war the general public shouldn’t be able to own? Personally I’d love to have some field artillery and a 20 mm anti air gun in case of drones.
pseudonymous in nc
@gogol’s wife:
Their concern is noted. That’s all that needs to be said.
Calouste
@gbear:
There are two problems with trying to be the good guy with the gun:
1) The bad guys started this thing and have the tactical advantage. For example, as shown in this case, the bad guys know how many bad guys there are.
2) You’re not the scriptwriter (heck, you haven’t even seen the script), and there only is one take.
Gin & Tonic
@Steve from Antioch: I wonder why that is not the case?
Don’t play disingenuous, it doesn’t fit you well. You know quite well why that’s not the case – it’s the same reason the CDC is prohibited from compiling statistics on firearm deaths and injuries.
Steve from Antioch
@Gian:
Lets’ see. I do not think the public should be able to own electromagnetic rail guns. ;).
But, seriously dude or dudette, there are all kinds of “weapons of war” that I don’t think the public should be able to own.
Steve from Antioch
@Gin & Tonic: Not being disingenuous at all. Are you saying that insurers are legally prohibited from setting liability rates according to whether the homeowner owns firearms?
If so, I did not know that.
I have had friends who’s liability insurance was increased because they had a swimming pool. My rates didn’t.
Ruckus
@Steve from Antioch:
She’s dishonest?
You are a fucking asshole. A dense fucking asshole. You think you sound reasonable? You are wrong. You are a 4 yr old in an adults body. And a fucking dense 4 yr old at that.
I’m done with you. My time is not that valuable but is far to valuable to spend any more time with a proven asshole like you.
Betty Cracker
@Steve from Antioch: Do you know how many school shootings have occurred so far this year alone? Almost 40. Not all resulted in death or injuries, but yeah, despite what the NRA or John Lott tell you, school shootings are really a thing. Lockdown drills are not some paranoid fantasy concocted to separate you from your precious.
John N
@tesslibrarian:
I have heard so many people tell essentially this same exact story, and it is always sad to hear. People always seem to ask “how could it happen? How can someone smart/reasonable/compassionate get this way?” I believe the answer is, basically, hypnosis. Read about Scientology’s “training routines” to understand more.
Scientolgy Training Routines
A big part of this is many, many isolated hours between the subject and the brainwasher. In other words, when people are listening to Rush or FOX News. They say things that seem mostly reasonable, and then when the subject is nodding along in agreement, they slip in something that’s not quite right, but the subject is already agreeing, so it makes it less likely that they will question it. After all, he just said so many things you agreed with! Eventually, they come to regard the brainwasher as a trusted and then, the only trusted source of information. Countless hours spent listening to a speaker say things that are (a) highly repetetive and (b) gibberish has a kind of hypnotic effect. People’s brains can’t process what they’re hearing. People begin to zone out, becoming even more suggestible to information presented to them. This is why they’re always using the same exact phrases all the time, because they’re not actually English sentences that are intended to have meaning. They are magical incantations that signal that one is or is not a member of the cult. Argue against them, and you will be the enemy. This is why intellectual consistency is not a concern of theirs, and that’s why they can change their positions so easily. They’re not really intellectual positions.
There is also a physical component, as people become physically addicted to the rush of self-righteousness they feel as a member of that kind of group setting. All of these feelings are carefully, and intentionally, stoked by the cult leadership. Fear and power are the two sides of the cult coin. You are made to feel fearful, but the cult makes you feel powerful against whatever it is you are told to fear.
But the fear remains. And the doubt remains. People who question the cult are dealt with in the harshest possible manner, so anyone having doubts has enormous pressure to ignore them. This leads to self doubt, which leads to a need for more assurance from the cult leaders, and from the other cult members. To question the group makes you an enemy of the group. And to be an enemy of the group is to be an enemy of all that is good in the world. To be an enemy of good is to be evil. This is the kind of thinking that cults encourage, and it FUCKS PEOPLE’S BRAINS UP COMPLETELY. Even smart, compassionate, caring, reasonable people are prone to these techniques, especially if they’re not aware of them. Furthermore, even if one begins to entertain doubts, they will do everything they can to convince themselves that the doubts are wrong, and the cult is right, because people don’t want to admit to themselves that they have been duped, and they don’t want to admit that they wasted their time doing something that was not worthwhile, and people will expend a lot of mental energy to convince themselves that they were NOT dupes, that everyone else is wrong. They will have plenty of like minded people in the cult to tell them that. Outside the cult, not so much. Certainty is what so many people crave, and it is what the cult purports to give them. But really, they are stoking doubt and reliance on the cult itself as the only way to feel safe/assured/certain. Like a drug addict, they crave that feeling of certainty. It doesn’t last, and it isn’t real, but they’re addicted.
This is what we are dealing with. They were always people who were prone to be conservative, but they would NOT be anything like they are today if they were not being pushed by a mind control cult. The Republican Party is a mind control cult, and it’s members are brainwashed. IT IS BEYOND THEIR CONTROL. No one wants to get brainwashed by a cult, and it can be very difficult to convince cult members that they are brainwashed. It is very powerful. But that’s what we’re actually dealing with, and until we realize that, we will never make a dent in this problem. We can keep hoping that one day they all wake up, en masse, and say “what were we thinking?” That will not happen.
I don’t know how to deal with this, but it is something we need to at least acknowledge before we can get down to the actual work of fixing this. Until we do, we’ll keep arguing at them, using their own words against them, pointing out their inconsistency and their hypocrisy, and keep showing them stats and figures that show they’re wrong, and none of it will ever make the slightest dent in their thinking.
Steve from Antioch
@Betty Cracker: I understand that school shootings happen. That is kind of beside the point about the wisdom of lockdown policies though, isn’t it? Because if the shooting happened that either tends to show that the lockdown policy was either not in place or was ineffective.
John N
PS – I’m sorry that my comment is so long, but I think it’s something we should be talking about. I’d been wondering for so many years how good people could suddenly all start taking these positions, which are, let’s face it, morally sickening and outrageous, completely beyond the pale for civilized society. It never made any sense until I read about hypnosis, brainwashing and cults. Suddenly, it all made perfect sense. I just hope you’re not all too annoyed at me for being so wordy!
Morzer
@Steve from Antioch:
You do seem fond of these simplistic all or nothing approaches to reality. Perhaps a lockdown mitigated the situation and made a shooting less devastating than it might have been. Ever thought of that?
gogol's wife
@John N:
It’s a very interesting and important comment. It sounds right to me.
Morzer
@John N:
It certainly sounds like a pretty accurate description of the way the wingnut “news” media operates.
Steve from Antioch
@Morzer:My understanding, as simplistic as it is, is that the majority of school shootings involve students who bring guns to school and start shooting. In other words, they are inside the school shooting _before_ lockdown procedures are instituted.
I aint no expert or anything but I think that shootings where someone just barges into the school and starts shooting are something of a rarity.
Morzer
@Steve from Antioch:
So, in sum, you don’t actually know what you are talking about? Right?
skerry
Los Angeles schools under lockdown right now. Guy on the loose with some sort of “assault rifle” following hour long police pursuit.
Gian
@Steve from Antioch: really? I don’t believe you. The extended magazine and modified are 15 is a rebranded military weapon. Why is that wonderful to protect against tyranny but a howitzer isn’t
I mean if I’m going to take on tyranny I need at least some depleted uranium shells.
Steve from Antioch
@John N:
I have wondered about this. There are folks in my family who watch Fox and read the Blaze and so forth so as nutty as their views are, you can kind of understand the genesis. The thing that I really don’t understand is that Fox viewership is only a couple of million people. If you throw in Breitbart and Beck and everybody else, I bet you can’t get it above 5 million.
How can such a small viewership have such a huge effect?
Mnemosyne
@skerry:
Don’t worry, it’s impossible for bullets to pass through windows, so putting students on lockdown away from any windows when there’s an armed gunman in the neighborhood is just security theater.
/snark
Frankly, I’m getting the feeling that our Steve doesn’t actually understand how guns work since he seems clueless about why you might want to keep students away from windows (aka on lockdown) when someone is running around outside with a gun.
Betty Cracker
@Steve from Antioch: You compared lockdown drills to TSA de-shoeing policies, which implies that they are a gross overreaction to the vanishingly small chance of another shoe bomber and more about theater than prevention. You’re wrong; school shootings are a serious problem whether you choose to recognize them as such or not, and it makes sense for administrators to have policies in place to deal with a shooter situation.
You’d rather sit there and criticize administrators than deal with the real, horrendous problem of gun violence in general and school shootings in particular. Whatever. Keep being part of the problem. Eventually, a solution will be imposed on you, and you’re not going to like it.
Steve from Antioch
@Gian: Well, don’t know what I can do to convince you. I’m not sure where I would draw the line about what people could own. Even bolt actions were once the vanguard of “military weapons.” Pace many gun nuts, I don’t think that citizens – even with “military weaponry” – would be able to do much to repel a full on military take-over of the country by the military.
@Morzer: I try to acknowledge when I have incomplete data. I think that is a _good_ thing.
Chris
@tesslibrarian:
This is the key, I think. Because teabaggers are such an all-or-nothing, absolutist movement, whatever your “gateway drug” is will eventually suck you in to the point where you either find that the movement is too much and reject it, or (I guess like your godfather) you dive in headfirst and become one of the zombies.
Morzer
@Steve from Antioch:
It would be a good thing if you didn’t try and fake up arguments based on that lack of knowledge to which you have just confessed.
chopper
@gogol’s wife:
“Steve from Antioch” is the site’s spanking-new neckbeard.
Steve from Antioch
Yes, obviously, the chances of a successful who bombing are smaller than the chances of a school shooting. A single successful shoe bombing could easily kill 300 people. School shootings – even if you include colleges and universities – don’t add up to that many deaths per year.
And yes, it makes sense to have plans in place to deal with a shooter situation. That is quite a bit different to a shooter-a-mile-away-who-is-heading-in-the-general-direction-of-this-school-situation.
I advocate for what I think are commonsense gun laws (which earn me the same sort of inane vilification from some gun owners as I’ve received from some in this thread today.) The commonsense approach does not seem to be working. You’re right, I suspect that there will be a “solution” imposed that I will not like someday – the notion of working towards compromises in this country is now pretty much a joke.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Betty Cracker: I have been saying this to every gun owner I have ever met for the last fifteen years. They do not think it can happen.
They are so wrong.
My guns were costly. One has great sentimental value. But I’m done, ready to hand them all over on the day that it’s announced that nobody in this nation can own one again, and that announcement is backed with draconian laws that will allow the government, by any means necessary, to find and take guns from citizens and put those who refuse to surrender them in prison for life. And that day is coming. It may be slow; I may not live to see it, but it will come.
Steve from Antioch
@Morzer: Here’s an idea, why don’t you address what I wrote instead of just trying to be insulting?
If I’m wrong about something, I’d like to know.
chopper
@Steve from Antioch:
i’m still curious as to what you thought the principal of the school Betty refers to should have done.
John N
@Steve from Antioch: I’m not totally sure. I think that most people, even who vote, aren’t that involved in politics, or even aware of them. They vote on the basis of which party they identify with, and so a lot of people who vote Republican aren’t really doing it for the same reasons that the hardcore Republican, FOX News/Rush Limbaugh base is doing it. They do it because they see old white guys wearing suits, and hear them talking about “freedom” and whatever, and that’s good enough for them, because they don’t identify with “hippies.” The news media treats the Republicans as if their wildly shifting positions are reasonable, and most people don’t know enough to actually make the decision on the basis of real information. So, basically, I don’t think that all the people who vote Republican are really PART of the Republican cult. But they still buy into the notion that the Republicans are fiscally responsible, etc, because they get all their information from the news media, which exists ONLY for the purpose of maximizing corporate profits, and say what you will about Republican politicians, but they are definitely committed to maximizing corporate profits, no matter what.
Then, the 5 million you mentioned are so vocal, especially within their own party, that they have succeeded in moving the entire party’s agenda. But they’re brainwashed, so the agenda always keeps moving toward making sure that super wealthy people get to collect and keep an ever increasing share of the wealth in this country. That’s always the end game. Combine that with a HEALTHY dose of racial hatred (I’m a white man and the things that white men say to other white men when they think no women or non-white people are around are fucking disgusting), and you have the toxic mix that we have today.
That’s my take, anyway. They may be only 5 million or less, but they are driving the conversation in this country, and they are driving it exactly where the cult wants them to. Other groups value communication and compromise, so they try to compromise. But you can’t compromise with a cult, the same way you can’t compromise with a toddler throwing a tantrum in the toy store. So you just keep moving toward the cult position, slowly but surely, always being able to justify every incremental concession you make, until one day you look around and say “where am I? How did I get here?” That’s where we’re at, I think.
Mnemosyne
@Steve from Antioch:
Good thing we’re not talking about a weapon that can easily shoot projectiles from a mile away. I mean, bullets always stay within a few feet of where they’re fired, so it’s not like a schoolkid standing by a window a mile away could be in any danger, right?
Basic physics is not your strong suit.
Morzer
@Steve from Antioch:
I have addressed what you wrote – and you don’t seem to like it. You need to grow up and stop screaming for your cyber-mom every time someone points out that you don’t know what you are talking about.
Ferd of the Nort
@Steve from Antioch: “II it were my decision if there were an armed deputy on campus as you say and if there were a way to have him secure the entrances to the school without a lockdown (you did not answer that question) the I would not have locked down the school. I would have had the deputy secure the entrance and I would have stood by ready to order a lockdown if the shooter actually showed up at the school.”
So the way to deal with a potential gunman is to have a lock-down of the school, but call it something else.
High capacity magazine = more than 5 in a long gun, don’t need public short guns, so zero works there.
Steve from Antioch
@chopper: See 208 above. I don’ t know how to make links.
@John N: That’s what I have pretty much concluded, too. Just like I don’t think that the Civil Rights act would have passed had Johnson not been president, I don’t think there is going to be a meaningful “grand compromise” on gun issues until there is someone in office with credibility with gun owners — but realistically I don’t see what incentive such a person would have.
The inherent racism among Tea-Party types made the reflexively hate Obama from the outset so there is now way he could forge any sort of compromise.
That’s why I suspect that Betty is correct – there is going to be stalemate for years – maybe decades, then there will be president, supreme court, and enough members of congress who will take some drastic action. The spring is just getting wound tighter and tighter right now.
Trollhattan
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Have related this story before, but anyway…once worked in a steel mill melt shop (where be the big furnaces) and one day, guys in suits show up toting cardboard boxes. They were detectives disposing of guns–unclaimed, evidence, etc. They handed them off to the shift foreman and watched as he pitched them, one by one, into fhe furnace door.
Guns to structural steel is the best fate I can imagine for them to this day, and wish more folks had the opportunity to see them disappear into the molten pool.
Compare and contrast to the Arizona assholes who made it illegal to destroy guns purchased in public buy-backs. Those poor, innocant guns. We are a sick, sick society.
John N
@Steve from Antioch: There’s no chance that meaningful legislation on this can pass in Congress whatsoever. Some states will do what they can do address the issue, and some other states will do everything they can to undermine what the former states did to address the issue. It’s not going away any time soon.
But for once, I’d like our side to start the negotiation with some kind of draconian position, like extremely tight regulations on who may sell firearms, so that no one can get a license to actually do it. Or hell, even the dreaded “take all your guns away.” And then compromise from that position. I know some people say “but that would be playing into exactly what they say about us,” and I would respond, “so what? Let them be right for once in their miserable lives, if it means we take guns out of their hands, it is worth it. They already think that about us anyway, no matter what positions we take or compromises we try to make, so why not just do the thing they’re all so clearly terrified of?”
Democrats shouldn’t be afraid to pass unconstitutional legislation in order to do this. The republicans do it all the time on the abortion issue, then the Supreme Court reject what they did, and gives them a roadmap on how to do what they want constitutionally. And they score points with their base in doing it.
I’d like to see our side use some emotion for once, like talking about how they care more about making sure that Ted Nugent gets to have as many guns as he wants than making sure that elementary school children don’t get murdered by gun violence. It has the benefit of being true. Let them talk about how mean we are. Then we can call them a bunch of little whining babies who could never stand up to Putin. This is how this game is played!
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Trollhattan: Yes, we are. And the example you cite is a sick as it gets.
I’ve been offered jobs in Arizona. Why move somewhere where some right-wing loony or Arapaio Militiaman can shoot me down on the street, no questions asked?
Schlemizel
Just got home & I am sorry if this is info that is mentioned already but I heard it on NPR as I was riding home.
The person shot at WalMart in Las Vegas was 31 YO with a concealed carry permit. He confronted the pair after they ordered everyone to the back of the store. They shot & killed him. I guess the only thing that can stop a good guy with a gun is a bad guy who is only too happy to shoot first.
This poor stupid kid was killed by the NRA and their ammosexuals who believe only a gun can make you safe. Wonder how they will spin that one.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Ferd of the Nort:
Get rid of detachable magazines. Their only purpose at any size is to make reloading faster. Internal, five round maximum magazines for rifles and pump shotguns. Revolvers only for hand gun and set the bar high for concealed carry. Ban semi-auto weapons for civilian use. Ban open carry except at ranges and on hunting land. Mandate trigger locks and/or gun safes.
Chris
@John N:
Yeah, this is something that always gets me about the “we mustn’t vindicate their perception of us” fears. Vindicating their perceptions is irrelevant: between the MSM and the right wing media, we’re already treated as though we held the extreme position on [guns, abortion, healthcare, pick your issue] that the right says we do. How much more trouble could we be in if we actually held that position?
Fantastic post about cult behavior and its application to the Fox News crowd, also too.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@John N: Goddamn, finally, somebody who gets how this damnable game is played, and what’s going to have to happen to get from point A to point B.
Chris
@Calouste:
Brilliant.
I’ve thought for a while that Wrong Genre Savvy was a trope applicable to many conservatives.
Southern Beale
@John N:
Of course the righties would call for the fainting couches because the evul Dems are “politicizing a tragedy” and only Republicans are allowed to do that, lather, rinse, repeat.
Drunken hausfrau
My kids’ school called today with the sad news that a student (who just graduated last week!) had been shot and killed just standing on the street in the middle of a sunny summer day…. Counselling services are available at school.
It’s devastating and horrifyingly ordinary.
john fremont
@Barry: Your comment brings up a similar incident from the mid 1980’s, the shootout between the Philadelphia Police and the MOVE commune in 1985. MOVE did not pay taxes or utilities and did not comply with city regs, and the Philly Police came in with SWAT teams
. MOVE was an African-American group and had no sympathy from anyone as far as I remember.
Elizabelle
@John N:
I thought your comment was not overlong. It was excellent.
Benghazi!
Tehanu
@Steve from Antioch:
Oh, we’ve tried that. The ammosexuals just start screeching — your word, dude — about slippery slopes. Which is bullshit and we know it and you know it. So thanks for your totally useless advice.
Tehanu
@Steve from Antioch:
I really should read the whole thread before responding. Uh, Steve, how do you think smoking went from something pretty much everybody did to something that most people look down on? The “political strategy” involved pointing out that smokers stank and died early and poisoned everybody else, so I’d say that focusing derision on them worked pretty damn well. Too bad about your dick, by the way.
Jebediah, RBG
@Tehanu:
I think that’s at least partly how it worked for drunk driving, too.
Paul in KY
@Gian: I’ve always wanted a 40mm Bofors…
Paul in KY
@John N: Excellent comments, John.
Paul in KY
@Mnemosyne: Steve hasn’t been killed by a stray bullet yet, thus the odds of it happening to anyone are miniscule.
Odysseus M Tanner
For some folks, anything to do with a gun is gun culture, which is a way of turning a blind eye to the real gun culture and the real power.