According to CNN, 10 people have been killed and more than 20 injured at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon. Reports are still sketchy, but the anchor says the shooter has been detained, and the cops are on scene making sure there are no other shooters.
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Roger Moore
Is it still too soon to talk about gun control, or at least keeping guns out of the hands of crazy people?
trollhattan
Crap. Crap. Crap.
And we’ll learn nothing, do nothing about guns. Just another day ending in “y” in America.
Not That Guy
It’s always the wrong time to talk about gun control.
Which is not the same thing as banning guns – you can tell that’s true, because the phrase is “gun control“, not “gun bans” – but somehow that never makes it into the heads of the gun fetishists.
A guy
Horrible
SatanicPanic
come on guys, we need to be talking about mental health so Republicans can oppose that too. It’s not fair they have to oppose the same thing all the time.
Robin G.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
beltane
This country is eating itself alive.
Linnaeus
The fact than one can even say “and another mass shooting” is pretty damning.
the Conster
@beltane:
but but but but ISIS!!!!
zzyzx
Where WERE those good guys with guns damnit?
Betty Cracker
Oh good Christ, the anchors are yammering on about “gun-free zones.”
Patricia Kayden
Yep. That’s what happens when everyone has the right to bear arms.
Anoniminous
I’m so old I remember when months would go by between mass shootings.
Butch
@Roger Moore: Your question is rhetorical, yes? Actually you beat me to the same comment.
beltane
We should all bow down and offer thanks to our god, the awesome metal phallus of freedom, to whom this sacrifice was made.
I expect gun sales to go up, because in America TERROR=FREEDOM.
beltane
@Betty Cracker: The whole country has certainly become a sanity-free zone.
Elizabelle
A shooting at a campus. How very unusual.
Am watching Walter Matthau in Gangster Story on TCM. Only movie he ever directed; low budget but so fun to look at the SoCal locations and big whale cars.
Here it is on Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35QVmoLY5QQ
They’re driving around in a woody. He’s hiding out at a citrus grove. Shot around Anaheim and LA.
Linnaeus
@beltane:
In that vein, this essay by Garry Wills in the wake of Sandy Hook can’t be reposted enough.
Linnaeus
@Anoniminous:
When was the last one? I’m losing track.
shell
Fuck!
A guy
I heard on Chicago radio this morning that murders are up 21 percent in Chicago in 2015.
Archon
I’d like to think we are approaching a tipping point in mass shootings where people will demand some changes. Then again I thought 20 white 1st graders getting murdered would be a tipping point too, and it wasn’t.
trollhattan
@zzyzx:
Having been in Roseburg many times, I’ll guess if it’s deer season there were quite a few in the general area.
D58826
Gee its been awhile since we have a had a mass shooting in which the number of dead is in double digits. Does that mean an armed society is a peaceful society. AND YES THAT IS VERY VERY BITTER SNARK AND ANGER
SatanicPanic
@Archon: It is changing, just not enough to move politicians to make changes. Sadly I think this issue is going to be dealt with in the same way we are dealing with cigarettes, with people slowly coming around to the idea that they are both dumb and unfashionable.
trollhattan
Here’s a link to the Oregonian live coverage They don’t seem to know much yet, but might have resources the national media won’t.
Susan K of the tech support
Gah. Oh no. My cousin lives in Roseburg. It’s a small town. As word comes out, my cousin’s sure to be acquainted with people affected by this.
Elizabelle
More dead than at the recruiting station.
Maybe the peacekeepers holding their precious guns can show up and patrol our college campuses.
And our schools.
And our movie theatres.
And our churches.
And our shopping malls.
And our restaurants.
And our beauty salons.
And …
Heliopause
I don’t really have much connection to Roseburg but I’ve driven through it dozens of times, gotten gas, stayed in motels a few times. Always weird when something like this happens in a place you’re even a little bit familiar with.
boatboy_srq
@Not That Guy: You have to wonder whether the ammosexuals aren’t protecting, not their right to bear arms, but their ability and privilege to execute an incident such as this. We really need to start tying the two together: if you want no restrictions on gun ownership / gun possession then you’re actually looking for an opportunity to behave exactly like this (and other) shooter(s).
philpm
Have the NRA and GOP issued their joint “move along, nothing to see here” press release yet?
Trinity
My heart is beyond breaking.
A guy
Maybe the shooter was a disgruntled gay minority previously employed by the college who obtained the gun legally and had no history of mental illness. Or maybe he was a she and she was an illegal immigrant. Or maybe a white supremacist or an anti abortion zealot.
Laura
The problem is guns, but the problem is also men. Is this really all the fault of testosterone? I’m truly baffled. Women seem to do just fine working out their issues without constantly resorting to killing people.
Amir Khalid
@trollhattan:
A few years ago, you might recall, some NRA guy was advocating that the blind should be eligible for gun permits in more states. (More states, that is, than Texas, Michigan and Iowa.)
Patrick
@Archon:
Not only that, many gun control laws we had has since been eliminated.
Why is that mass shootings are so common in the US but so rare in other countries? Why do they keep happening in the one country that have decided it is such a good idea not have any serious gun control laws? Jeez, I wonder why?
Patrick
@Laura:
Somehow men in other countries also seem to do just fine without shooting other people.
boatboy_srq
@Elizabelle: It’s a frightening thing to say, but I’d be interested in any statistics on shootings at schools/universities and the connection (or lack thereof) that the shooters had with the institutions. Willing to bet that the percentage of shooters who were either attending or teaching is pretty low. And it’s sickening that there are enough of these events for statistical analysis.
schrodinger's cat
@Laura: Wasn’t there a female post doc from Harvard who shot some people, quite possibly the exception that proves the rule.
Laura
@Patrick: Well not really, since 95% of murderers on the planet are men. It’s just that in America it’s easy for them to kill lots of people at once,
Anoniminous
@Linnaeus:
JuneJulyI’m losing track too
Note: that doesn’t count the double murder of the reporter and cameraman in Va in August
Roger Moore
@Butch:
Of course it’s rhetorical. What I’d say is that it’s not too soon to talk about gun control; it’s too late. At the very least, it’s too late for the 10 people killed today and the who knows how many injured. It’s too late for the people in Isla Vista, for the ones at Virginia Tech, at the theater in Aurora, in Sandy Hook, at the Sikh Temple in Oak Creek, and all the other people murdered in mass shootings I can’t even list here. But maybe it’s not too late to do something about the next would-be mass killer, at least if we don’t put off talking about gun violence until the next shooting, and the next, and the next.
No One of Consequence
Weren’t we just discussing this yesterday?
Guns are remote controls for someone else’s life.
I think that the evidence is in, we simply are not responsible enough as a nation to allow our citizenry to go about armed.
Time to change it up. I propose a compromise: OK NRA/GunHumpers/AmmoSexuals/2ndAmendmentTrumpsAllers:
You *can* have as many guns as you want.
*HOWEVER* none of them can fire a cartridge round. Powder, wad and round must be packed individually by the operator *in chamber*. Muskets: OK. Blunderbusses: OK. BlackPowerRifles: OK.
Anything with brass? You get thrown into the hoosegow, and the for-profit-ALEC-driven prison you will be visiting will misplace their key to your cell.
Sound reasonable? Who’s with me?
(Looks around and starts to sign up the crickets to his newsletter recipient list…)
Sigh.
– NOoC
Steve from Antioch
Cue the gun obsessive who can finally stand up and tell us all how much they care about strangers getting shot.
Roger Moore
@Laura:
I don’t think it’s testosterone, per se. It’s a response to loss of privilege. That’s why it’s overwhelmingly white men who go on shooting rampages.
Anoniminous
According to this:
trollhattan
@Amir Khalid:
Now that you mention yes [sigh] I do remember. “Why should the sighted have all the fun/aren’t the blind entitled to protection from Thugs(tm) and Tyranny(also tm)?
We have lost our minds, maybe so long ago we wouldn’t recognize them if we encountered them again.
Patrick
@Laura:
That’s why I said “Somehow men in other countries also seem to do just fine without shooting other people”.
My point was that gun control works just fine in other countries, which is why you don’t see men killing as many human beings with guns as in the US. And once you take the gun away, it becomes so much harder for men to kill somebody.
trollhattan
@Steve from Antioch:
Right on time. Your really do have a bat signal, don’t you? Say “Hi” to mom.
? Martin
@Roger Moore: That’s my take as well. I think David Frum hit it pretty well: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/04/why-gun-rights-supporters-win-when-other-conservative-causes-lose/361396/
MomDoc
@schrodinger’s cat:
That was in my hometown of Huntsville, Alabama. She killed 3 of her colleagues and injured several more during a faculty meeting after she found out she was not getting tenure.
There seems to have been more going on with her because after that, she was also charged with killing her brother from 20-odd years before. Originally, they had ruled that her brother’s death was an accident but after the mass murder at UAH, they changed their minds.
boatboy_srq
@Anoniminous: Numbing, isn’t it? I saw Silence of the Lambs when it first hit theatres, and again about a month ago. First time, the idea of a serial-killing psychopath was really scary; nowadays it’s just Thursday.
Anoniminous
@Laura:
Generally, testosterone affects mood by making it “even more so.” But, as usual, it’s much more complicated than that.
Bokonon
The NRA is on the scene, and is apparently concerned about the gun’s welfare.
“We want to make sure that none of the jack-booted thugs from local law enforcement molest the innocent gun’s well-being or Constitutional rights in any way” said the NRA’s spokesperson.
The gun was said to be resting comfortably.
[I am kidding, of course.]
A guy
If the shooter is transgender woman who identifies as a man is Laura’s hypothesis correct?
Betty Cracker
CNN is saying the shooter went into at least a couple of classrooms in a science building and shot a massive number of people. There are also reports that the shooter posted something on social media before the attack, but no details there yet. ETA: Oh, and yeah, the shooter is male.
Doug R
@SatanicPanic: It’s already happening, the percentage of households with guns has been steadily declining. It’s the households that already have guns that are driving the sales.
trollhattan
@Bokonon:
I knew that, but only because you didn’t write “guns.”
the Conster
Oregon: no permit need to purchase a gun; no registration or license to own a gun; no assault weapons ban; shall-issue open carry.
How’s that workin’ for ya?
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Archon: 20 white 1st graders was a tipping point. It showed that finally, we’d never do anything about this.
gvg
@boatboy_srq: All of the campus shootings I know about had a connection to the shooter. UF had a stabbing incident on campus recently where the knifeman did not have a connection other than living in the area. We have a robust, possibly overdeveloped automated emergency notification system that goes to all students and employee’s cell phones and emails (over 50,000). That was instrumental in finding the guy. Unfortunately he was going for another person with an ax, so the cop had to shoot him so there was no chance to interview for info and it’s all speculation.
I can’t recall any campus shootings that weren’t student or employee.
Benw
@Roger Moore: very well put, Mr. Bond.
trollhattan
@Doug R:
Correct, and a statistic that needs repeating, often. The paths of the NRA and RNC are remarkably similar.
redshirt
Too soon!
I read on the Twitter that once we moved on past Sandy Hook – i.e. that we’ll tolerate the shooting of small children – gun control debate in America was over.
If we’ll tolerate that with no action, we’ll tolerate anything.
Laura
@Roger Moore: I’m not talking about shooting rampages. I’m talking about shooting and murders in general. Let’s not act like white men are the ones doing most of the killing in this country because they’re losing privilege. No, it’s just men in general, for a variety of reasons, and I’m so damn sick of it.
This has been true since the beginning of time obviously, and nothing will change it, but I just don’t understand WHY.
Brachiator
There really is no point in posting comments about this tragedy.
One only need to post the comments related to the last mass shooting.
geg6
@schrodinger’s cat:
Yeah, that was at Alabama, I think. Before that, the only female I can remember doing this shit is the young female Army reservist who shot up people at Penn State on the HUB lawn in the 90s…
Yes, here it is. She shot five but only killed one, thankfully. And I can’t even believe I typed that.
http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archives/article_433efbb9-0d6c-57ba-bf6f-a6ba5b54cc70.html
boatboy_srq
@A guy: @boatboy_srq: Dude, with that timing, you’re just asking for this. Based on significant psychological study too I might add.
Adam L Silverman
@boatboy_srq: here’s the link to Mother Jones, which maintains a data chronology of all mass shootings in the US between 1985 and 2015:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings-mother-jones-full-data
I’ll put something up later in more detail on mass shootings. I was the primary author/researcher on the US Army’s preliminary report on Soldiers who commit mass shootings. Unfortunately the second and third phases of the research, which would have moved it beyond the preliminary report, never happened because the Senior Executive who wanted me to do it rotated into a new assignment and his backfill was not interested in doing research on this or other criminological areas pertaining to Soldiers who have committed crimes.
bystander
And the same day recreational marijuana became legal in Oregon. Bummer? Or causal? You decide.
Belafon
@Elizabelle:
They’d love to, as long as they’re not held responsible for anyone they kill, which will strangely be minorities.
Yatsuno
Texting a friend in Medford, which is (fortunately) a few hours away. The situation is still very fluid and has him on edge, and he was in the Navy for 6 years and is quite comfortable around guns.
@Betty They are saying that six of the victims are in critical condition and being evacuated to local hospitals. Totally crazy.
Adam L Silverman
@schrodinger’s cat: there was. That, if I’m recalling correctly, had to do with a romantic relationship gone wrong. Women, when they kill, tend to do so using different tools than men.
geg6
@gvg:
The Penn State one, I think, there was no connection other than the shooter and the University both were in State College, PA.
Rob
Crap crap crap indeed.
I heard about this about a half hour ago while driving in the rain on the highway. The news really devastated me and I fought back tears for a minute. Then I turned off the radio to concentrate on driving.
boatboy_srq
@gvg: That’s disappointing.
And you know sooner or later some wingnut will use this to defund education and close public universities because they’re inherently hazardous.
OzarkHillbilly
@Bokonon: Are you sure?
trollhattan
@gvg:
Nearby CC had a shooting recently that involved four, at least three of whom were students. Two dudes faced off against two other dudes, one dude pulled a knife and stabbed another, upon which the stabee’s partner pulled a gun and shot the other two and ran off. One shootee is dead, two are in jail on various charges, and the murderer is at large. This all happened in an outdoor parking lot in the mid-afternoon and luckily, no bystanders were hurt.
A guy
The college was a gun free zone. citizens who carry and could have stopped it probably were following the law.
Anoniminous
@boatboy_srq:
It is.
I’ve given up. We’re not going to get reasonable about this until the NRA’s political power is broken and that won’t happen until the GOP’s political power is broken.
Lot’s of luck on that.
boatboy_srq
@Adam L Silverman: I stand (sadly) corrected. Thanks.
Elizabelle
On the positive side, our NRA-money swilling congresscritters are safe as can be, locked away behind guards and loads of taxpayer provided security. Hard for a mere citizen to get into a Capitol building, or to park anywhere nearby.
They’re safe at NRA conventions too. No guns allowed.
Community colleges?
Suckers!
Villago Delenda Est
This is about 70 miles south of me.
In fact, my first two years of elementary school were just north of Roseburg, in a little town called Winchester, on the banks of the North Umpqua River.
Of course it’s too soon to talk about gun violence in this fucked up country of cowards. It always is.
Villago Delenda Est
@A guy: You continue to demonstrate that you are a tool, and not a useful one.
balconesfault
At least one potentially sellable piece of legislation would be a tax on gun ammo, to be used for funding increased mental health services at the state level.
Keith G
I remember when football games and marching bands were the sure signs that schools were back in session.
Matt McIrvin
@Patrick:
It’s actually not clear that the US has an essentially unique rate of mass shootings. By sheer numbers we’re on top, but the US is a very large country. Per capita, some Scandinavian countries and Switzerland have higher rates.
I think part of the subtlety has to do with what counts as a mass shooting, and also the time frame. The really big ones are rare enough events for small countries that the data are really noisy. Any time frame of a few years surrounding Breivik’s one massacre makes Norway’s per-capita mass shooting death rate super-high.
In Switzerland there are a lot of guns, but they’re tightly controlled. Similarly, there’s a lot of guns in Finland, though tighter regs than the US, and they actually have a high per-capita rate of mass shootings. That suggests to me that tight gun control isn’t enough to prevent mass shootings; you have to basically ban guns.
The US has an unusually high rate of gun deaths, which is different. I suspect that what you have to do to bring down general gun deaths vs. mass shootings is probably not the same.
boatboy_srq
@balconesfault: Yes but you know the ammosexuals would turn that into a cottage industry opportunity, hand-making rounds because Big Gummint Is Coming For Your Lead.
A guy
Local radio keep parroting the line about the school being 180 miles south of Portland. That sure help me focus right in.
Betty Cracker
Now the anchor is reading a transcript between cops and a dispatcher in which the cops on the scene reported a gunfight with the shooter. It sounded initially like the cops took the shooter into custody, but maybe he’s dead. Still unclear at this point.
trollhattan
@Villago Delenda Est:
Oddly, I find this level of flailing uncharacteristically desperate…indicative of what I dare not guess. It’s so off-tune nobody’s taking the bait.
catclub
@Patrick:
Actually, Montreal, Quebec, has some early forerunners of this type of event. I think you google on Marc Lepine 1989.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
Jim Jeffries notes the insanity of US gun culture. “After Port Arthur, when the government said ‘no more guns,’ the Australians said seems right, about now,” he says. “Little children get murdered and your government says ‘maybe just get rid of the big guns’ and half your population said ‘fuck, no you can’t take my guns.'” Paraphrased, but it’s the gist.
He’s absolutely right. All the points he makes.
Calouste
@Roger Moore: I’m of the opinion that everyone who wants to own a gun is crazy, and should definitely be forbidden from owning any guns.
TaMara (BHF)
Anyone who wants to tout the good guy with a gun could have stopped this, I will remind you there were TWO armed police officers at Columbine at the time of shootings and TWO civilians (that we know of) with guns at Aurora theater during those shootings.None of those people were able to stop it.
But hey, go ahead, tell me how you with a gun could stop a gunman.
Betty Cracker
@Matt McIrvin: Speaking of Pam Geller’s pal Breivik, I read earlier today that he’s on a hunger strike because he doesn’t want to be in solitary and wants his PS2 upgraded to a PS3.
sharl
A follow-up response said the Buzzfeed reporter had the twitter account @byjoelanderson, and when I checked ~5min ago, it was in fact off-line.
Patrick
@Matt McIrvin:
Good point. I meant to say gun deaths rather than mass shootings.
True. Norway had one huge mass shooting. And eventhough that was their only major one, counting them per capita makes them look worse than the US. But when looking at gun deaths, Norway is way way way lower than the US. And ultimately, that’s the real problem, how to decrease the number of gun deaths.
sharl
A follow-up response said the Buzzfeed reporter had the twitter account @byjoelanderson, and when I checked about 5min ago, it was in fact off-line.
bemused
@trollhattan:
Obviously in need of long term mental health care.
HumboldtBlue
From the ongoing updates at Oregon Live
12:13: Michael Griffiths, CEO of Life Flight, says he’s been told there are at least six critically injured patients at the community college. They have sent six helicopters to the Roseburg Airport to assist with transporting victims to hospitals. No word yet on which hospitals.
12:12: Lorie Andrews, 57, lives on Songbird Court across the street from the campus. She was sitting on her back porch Thursday morning when she heard several shots. Minutes later, she said, cop car after cop car started flooding the area.
“Ambulances are still coming in,” she said at 11:45 a.m. “Cops are still coming in.”
She estimated roughly 20 ambulances and 75 police cars, including police officials in their private vehicles, pouring into the area. Officials aren’t allowing students to leave campus in their own vehicles, Andrews said, they are bussing them out.
“Everybody is in shock. Very very shocked,” Andrews said.
Patrick
@catclub:
Sorry for not being 100% clear. Yes, there are murders with guns in other countries. But not to the extent that we have here in the US. Not even close.
Aleta
@Roger Moore: And can we redefine those ‘crazy people’ so as to focus on (for example) distorted thinking together with extreme anger and signs of premeditated violence; or delusional grandiosity that jerks off to violent fantasies; or something like that. Coupled with resistance to getting help and maybe never agreeing to treatment.
Adam L Silverman
@Matt McIrvin: part of the issue is that mass shooting is a popular term, not what is used by those who study the phenomenon. I don’t mean to make it sound cold and analytic, but a mass shooting is simply a mass murder that has been committed using a handgun. Acitve shooter is the same type of phrase. Its descriptive and has made its way into popular use, but its not a research, scholarly, analytical, and/or law enforcement term for what is actually occurring.
The criteria for a mass murder is four victims separate from the perpetrator. If you’ve got three victims and the perpetrator kills himself or is killed by the police, its not a mass murder. Mass murders are further divided into two categories: serial homicides and spree killings. The differences have to do with do with target selection, when, where, and how each murder is committed, relationship of the perpetrator to the victims, things like that.
Belafon
@A guy: Sorry, but no, shithead. The enter state allows guns on campuses: http://www.ncsl.org/research/education/guns-on-campus-overview.aspx.
A guy
TaMara
As the owner of many guns, most of which are used to kill deer, I can confidently say that just because you have a gun you don’t necessarily use it. You have to be in the right position, as does your target. So I’m not surprised there are the instances you cite where the criminal activity was not prevented.
Anoniminous
@Laura:
The short and sweet of it is men are more likely to be mentally unstable than women. Couple that with the baseline higher levels of male aggression are found in all primates and here we are.
goblue72
Since Sandy Hook, there has been one shooting PER WEEK at an American school. 142 shootings so far.
We love our guns more than we love our children.
Elizabelle
Gosh. We don’t know the race of the shooter yet, do we?
So we don’t know if the answer is more mental health care or not.
trollhattan
@bemused:
I’ll kick in a nice, warm glass of milk and a Snuggie.
sharl
Several tweets from Libby Watson (cake enjoyer @libbycwatson):
there are people logging onto twitter right now to defend guns to those outraged that yet another mass gun murder has happened
people who are like, in this time of need… i must defend… the guns. the guns need me
imagine hearing about a mass shooting and thinking, i must get online as quickly as possible to start defending guns
bemused
@trollhattan:
I’ll kick in a nice, warm glass of milk with a straw and a straitjacket.
A guy
Belafon
https://web.archive.org/web/20150316175339/http://umpqua.edu/safety-security-information
Villago Delenda Est
@TaMara (BHF): This is the essential problem with the “firearms for defense” argument. A firearm is an weapon. It’s not a shield, it’s not armor. It’s an offensive tool. You can only return fire. You can try to keep the perpetrator’s head down. That’s about it.
The notion that “good guys” will neutralize “bad guys” assumes that you’ve got a rule set in the real world like you have in a video game…one that doesn’t allow for friendly fire or collateral damage.
The problem with a gun battle is that the bullets do not know, nor care, who they happen to hit. Good guy, bad guy, bystander…it’s all the same when lead is flying through the air. Unless all of these are armored to resist hot metal tearing through vulnerable flesh along random trajectories, well, there is no safety. None. Being armed is no guarantee that you won’t be hit in the initial volley, which means your “defensive” firearm has defended you from NOTHING. The idea that someone might be armed is not a deterrent to someone who seeks to inflict harm with a firearm.
The only way to win is not to play the game.
NickM
Our national plan is to do nothing and hope the next time it happens, it happens to someone else.
Patrick
@A guy:
Such utter BS. Why the hell do we never of citizens who carry who stop a mass shooting? We have had so many fricking mass shootings and never ever do we hear of it being stopped by some NRA type.
boatboy_srq
@TaMara (BHF): re: #105: You’ll notice that douchenozzle there doesn’t talk about what he uses his other guns for… Plus, the fantasy is clearly Everyone Packing All The Time, which is less lawnorder and more paranoia punctuated by the occasional Mogadishu-style shootout.
Villago Delenda Est
@Elizabelle: Odds are good that the shooter is white. Roseburg is a pretty white town. Oh, there are some local descendants of the indigenous peoples, but they are pretty much indistinguishable from your average white person. Unless someone self identifies as a native American, chances are you won’t know they are.
Calouste
@sharl: See my comment above. Gun ownership is a mental illness.
A guy
Belafon-
Since you probably won’t find it the relevant language is under the “dangerous devices” tab. Although it should probably be under “dangerous device in the hands of a criminal but not a guy”
Villago Delenda Est
@goblue72: Moloch must have sacrifices.
The Dangerman
@Susan K of the tech support:
A thoroughly lovely location; spent a lot of time there. Sad.
goblue72
@Patrick: Not even close is an understatement. The U.S. has over SEVENTY times the number of firearm related homicides than the United Kingdom. A diverse, Western democracy that is most decidedly NOT a socialist country.
70.
There are days when I feel like the Tories who fled to Canada in 1776 had the right idea. They got safe streets, universal healthcare, a relatively stable economy, a middle class still able to afford to buy house (as long as its not in Vancouver), and college costs that are twice as affordable at the U.S. (with a decent university system). We got massive inequality, a broken healthcare system, and Taylor Swift.
boatboy_srq
@Patrick: I’m reminded of the story from Gifford’s shooting, where GGwG nearly obliterated GGwoG who brought down BGwG just because he heard shots, saw a struggle and pegged the wrong one as the perp.
beltane
@Patrick: That’s because the NRA types, at least the ones who aren’t out there murdering humans for sport, are always hiding under their beds, fondling their metal “boyz” and pissing themselves in fear over the Mooslim hordes that populate their fantasies.
Yatsuno
@Patrick: I need to find that article about the Giffords shooting where the guy who was armed didn’t shoot because he had no idea who the actual bad guy was.
Iowa Old Lady
I say again what I’ve said before: I grew up right in the city of Detroit. I was never once in a situation where more guns made things better. It’s possible to imagine such a situation, but I never saw it around me, and I don’t see it on the news.
Betty Cracker
A couple of new details, according to CNN: the shooter is a male in his 20s, and yesterday, he was allegedly involved in a social media conversation about the shooting.
A guy
Patrick
Join the NRA. You will get the American Hunter magazine. They do a segment each month of crimes stopped by law abided gun owners.
HumboldtBlue
Here’s the live feed for KGW
goblue72
@Villago Delenda Est: Of course the shooter is white. But I assume Fox News will be talking today about how black on black crime is the real problem. Because libtards.
Adam L Silverman
@Villago Delenda Est: and the best example of this was the incident last Saturday night where someone armed with a gun attempted to come to the defense of a man being carjacked. Unfortunately his aim was not very good and instead of shooting one of the carjackers, he instead shot the person being carjacked in the head.
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/09/texas-good-guy-with-a-gun-shoots-carjacking-victim-in-head-then-runs-away/
If you recall one of the bystanders to the Gabby Giffords’ shooting, a man who had been in one of the shops at the strip mall, responded to the shots he heard fired. He came out of the shop, drew his weapon, took aim, and then decided not to fire and reholstered his weapon. When interviewed afterwards he stated (and I’m paraphrasing) that he couldn’t tell who the shooter was as two men were wrestling for the gun. Instead he piled onto both and helped to disarm the shooter. The man he originally was aiming at was not the shooter. Had he taken the shot, he would have killed an innocent man.
JPL
@Yatsuno: I remember that story but I am pretty sure, he also acknowledged, he would have shot the wrong person.
Thanks, Adam
catclub
@A guy:
Some are even true!
goblue72
@A guy: Is there a gun centerfold for you to whack off to? Or does your sociopathy mean you only get hard when someone is shot?
? Martin
@Patrick:
Because people who open or conceal carry not as part of their jobs are cowards. They’re afraid of urban youths with their loud music. They sure as fuck aren’t going to stick their head up and return fire.
Roger Moore
@Matt McIrvin:
That’s a bit misleading, because those countries are so small that the numbers aren’t statistically meaningful. They have a higher per-capita rate than the US because one incident there is enough to push the rate above ours. For example, Norway looks really terrible, with a higher rate of mass shootings per million population and a much higher rate of mass shooting deaths per capita than the US. But it turns out that’s all because of the Utoya Island mass shooting; that one incident- which was the only mass shooting in Norway in the time interval looked at- was enough to make Norway look terrible.
benw
@Villago Delenda Est:
Like global thermonuclear war. How about a nice game of chess?
JPL
CBS News is saying thirteen dead.
boatboy_srq
@Villago Delenda Est:
Also that real world shooting incidents don’t trigger IFF data in the retinas. GGwG fantasy scenarios assume the ability to distinguish perp from passerby, and in an all-armed-all-the-time environment that’s a bit difficult to do.
mai naem mobile
I wonder if Obama’s speechwriter has a fill in the blank standard form speech for mass shootings yet?
goblue72
@Roger Moore: In all fairness to Matt, he makes that exact same point in his comment re: how small population plus one big event equals noisy rates.
Frankly, the germane rate is homicide by gun rates – regardless if by mass shooting or not – and in that category, the U.S. is leading most Western nations by a rather wide per capita margin.
boatboy_srq
@goblue72: He missed his latest issue of Garden and Gun.
geg6
@goblue72:
Yes, this.
@? Martin:
And this. I have taken to telling everyone I know who gushes about his/her gun fetish that they are the very definition of a coward. The most cowardly of the cowardly. You can imagine how well this goes over here in Southwestern PA.
benw
@boatboy_srq: link broken, dude, but I’m not sure I want it fixed.
SatanicPanic
@? Martin: this is a great point. “I bought a gun because I was afraid someone would kill me” doesn’t suggest an abundance of courage.
Patrick
@A guy:
Hell, why not just watch FoxNews (BS mountain) where I can get a dwarfed reality without paying for it.
Roger Moore
@TaMara (BHF):
Obviously, they didn’t have enough guns. If everyone there had been armed, they would have been able to do something!/wingnut
I would back your comment up by pointing out that there was somebody with a concealed carry permit at the Gabby Giffords shooting. He decided not to take his gun out and start shooting, which was a good thing because the person he saw with a gun had just taken it away from the shooter.
Elizabelle
It’s Walter Matthau day on TCM. Charade now.
I cannot watch the newscaster choreography of a mass shooting. They’re tired of going through the motions too. And very practiced.
It’s good for ratings.
schlemazel
@mai naem mobile:
Of course he does – after all these shootings are all arranged by the evil Kenyon, Muslim, atheist, communist, fascist usurper in order to take away all my gunz. So they know about them beforehand
Mike in NC
Which GOP presidential candidate will call for mandatory concealed carry by every American over age 16?
schrodinger's cat
@Mike in NC: Ben Carson or Bobby Jindal. They have to show that they are crazier than thou to compensate for their darker hue.
lonesomerobot
Let me save everybody a lot of time here:
-Gun proponents will say it’s too soon to talk about what could be done to stop these shootings.
-While they’re saying it’s too soon, they’ll also say anti-depressants, violent movies, and video games are to blame.
-NRA will say if only a good guy with a gun had been there.
-Nothing else will be done, because America!
-See you all next time around, shouldn’t be but a few weeks; I mean, it IS the holiday season, after all.
-It’s really, really sad, because this is the truth, and you know it.
boatboy_srq
@benw: September’s issue had some very good advice on preparing for next year’s annuals, and on controlling rabbits and other pests.
/snark
schlemazel
@A guy:
Its on the page next to photos of the prayer rally in Peru. I used to be a member and get the magazine and one of the first things I got sick of was “The Armed Citizen”. Think letters to Penthouse but with bullets instead of genitalia.
trollhattan
@Yatsuno:
Don’t have a link. My hazy recollection was somebody working in a nearby office grabbed his gun and ran towards the scene. By the time he arrived the shooter had been disarmed (while reloading, yay magazines) and the guy who was holding the gun by then was nearly plugged by the newcomer.
At least that’s what my memory regurgitated.
? Martin
@A guy: Uh huh: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-weisser/good-guy-with-a-gun-self-defense_b_8209104.html
trollhattan
@Mike in NC:
Or 14, provided they’re accompanied by someone 16 or older. “Teach, your children well….”
boatboy_srq
@? Martin: He’ll read that as “BGwG has a less than 1 in 30 chance of being stopped by GGwG.” And you know it.
? Martin
@trollhattan: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/41018893/ns/slate_com/t/armed-giffords-hero-nearly-shot-wrong-man/#.Vg2T87xzNBU
? Martin
@boatboy_srq: Yeah, well, at least a guy can go collect the set of steak knives he’s earned from the NRA. He’s done his advocacy duty for the day.
Belafon
@A guy:
Do they include the gunfails, the 80 or so that happen for every fucking good guy with a gun? Like a section on the men who keep shooting their dicks off?
Belafon
@Belafon: Also, I’m wondering, do you sit around with your gun out all the time, pointing it at whoever walks by in case they might want to shoot you?
agorabum
@Laura: this is a problem of violent men…any comparable women shooters? Even one?
But hey, the tree of gun tyranny just got watered with the blood of innocents.
EZSmirkzz
And to think, some people have the temerity to say we live in the stupidest effing country on Earth.
boatboy_srq
@? Martin: And you know he’ll do more damage with the steak knives…
Speaking of which, why in the name of the Blessed 2nd Amendment is the fascination with firearms? “Arms” covers everything from an Ohio-class SSBN down to a carving knife, yet edged weapons aren’t evah discussed, and there are reams of regs on knives (including some that are getting some people arrested for carrying what are tools of their legitimate trades). Could it be because only 1%ers can afford the big stuff (and contract that out to DoD), and knives are Bad and Scary because Those People use them?
Villago Delenda Est
@Belafon: To be fair, those guys have phenomenal aims to be able to hit a target that small.
? Martin
@boatboy_srq: Knives are shit because you need to get close enough to the other person that they might muss your hair. Brave men shoot the loud music playing youths from a distance and then run away. That is a clear advantage.
Julie
@A guy: Public universities in Oregon are not gun-free zones:
D58826
@Patrick: Yea like the guy who intervened in a carjacking and shot the car owner. ooops
Listening to a local on CNN. They are in shock. This doesn’t happen in a quiet rural place like Roseberg(sp). It isn’t a big city. etc etc etc Hasn’t he figured out that this can happen anywhere anytime in the US. The common thread in all of this is the US and its gun fetish.
trollhattan
@? Martin:
Thanks. And good for Mr. Zamudo managing to stop himself. I’d compare and contrast with a certain Mr. Zimmerman, but….
Patrick
@Belafon:
A few months ago at our grocery store, a gun shot was heard. Everybody was screaming and ran for the exits. It turned out it was an idiot with a gun (legally purchased) who had apparently accidentally shot himself in the men’s restroom. Who the hell needs gun when they go grocery shopping???
I wonder if the NRA magazine included him as one of the law-abiding types…
Villago Delenda Est
@Belafon: This is part of the scenario that our friends the ammosexuals don’t comprehend. The assumption is that they’re always ready to return fire without the slightest thought. In the military, this is called “shitty fire discipline”, and will get you in a heap of trouble.
sharl
@sharl: FYI/FWIW, the Buzzfeed guy – @byjoelanderson – is back on twitter and ayup, the guns nuts were swarming him hard. From his subsequent tweets, it sounds like he plans on disappearing from twitter for a few days (he’s ‘working on a big story’…’shouldn’t be wasting time on twitter’…).
A pretty good backstory on Buzzfeed and its (highly constrained) reporting on gun-related issues is here. Looks like Mr. Anderson just plain momentarily forgot where he worked.
Citizen_X
Here is the list of mass shootings for 2015 from the Mass Shooting Tracker; this one would be # 294.
Note that they define a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people are shot, not necessarily murdered.
benw
@boatboy_srq: Followed your link. It was surprisingly… upscale.
JCT
@A guy: Presumably submitted by the valiant heroes themselves, kind of like Penthouse Letters? I’m sure those numbers are a minuscule percentage. Get real.
BTW, it was this “self reporting” of these good guys with a gun scenarios that skewed many of the original studies. The entire concealed carry movement is fueled by paranoia and fear. Just visit any gun-oriented forum, oozing with cowardice and hatred.
And for the record I’m an avid target shooter and I would never even think of carrying one of my firearms. They’ve never even been loaded in my house.
trollhattan
@boatboy_srq:
True enough. I guess in the intervening decades since the Bill of Rights was penned, the Free Markets (pbut) have spoken. Flintlocks and tomahawks: out. Glocks and Bushmasters: in. M1 Abrams are Elitist.
Villago Delenda Est
@goblue72: Anything to avoid discussing the actual incident at hand. Squirrel!
Hungry Joe
I have a long-standing policy — not that I expect anyone to have noticed: I do not to get into comment squabbles. Nothing wrong with comment squabbles, but they just ain’t … me. So while I might occasionally post something that disagrees with someone, I try never to provoke or attack.
I’m now making an exception:
@A guy:People are dead. A lot of them. Have you no sense of when to shut the fuck up, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of when to shut the fuck up?
gelfling545
@TaMara (BHF): More likely it would be like the “good guy” who wanted to stop the car jacking & ended up shooting the victim.
Anyway, in a situation like this where there’s an active shooter & police have been called, should they just take a person’s word for it that he’s not the “bad guy”? Great way to really confuse matters & endanger one’s self & others.
A guy
Goblie72-
I’ve never whacked off to a gun centerfold but in the words of Steve Martin I have held a Farrah faucet poster up with one hand in the bathroom
Villago Delenda Est
@JCT: It’s fueled by paranoia, fear, and cowardice.
Calouste
@boatboy_srq: IIRC samurai swords are illegal in Florida. Which of course should be a second amendment violation, because swords and sables were still in use in the military in the late 18th century.
trollhattan
@Patrick:
yikes. Hell, what about the Utah grade school teacher who shot herself through the leg while in the school can? Utah law conveniently makes it illegal to ask teachers whether they’re packing. Think about that for a moment….
? Martin
@Patrick:
Well, things happen: http://articles.latimes.com/2003/jun/30/local/me-slasher30
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Villago Delenda Est: I’ve observed that the ammosexuals have not a clue about fire discipline, or, frankly, the logistics of any exchange of gun fire. Hell my father taught me more about fire discipline (and safe gun handling and storage) when I was 10 than ammosexuals demonstrate an understanding of.
trollhattan
Back to the matter at hand.
catclub
@Calouste:
Set off your black minks upon the enemy chickens!
Villago Delenda Est
@catclub: A lot of military though in the early 20th Century was that “cold steel” would be the decisive factor in any battle. “Fix bayonets!” was the watchword. They had not yet encountered automatic weapons fire…the French tried mass rushes of German positions in 1914 and were mowed down like a combine taking out a wheat field.
There are still bayonets in arms rooms, but basically they’re used for opening stubborn MREs in a combat situation. US military logistics are such that it’s unlikely that cold steel will be decisive…it assumes everyone is out of ammunition, and tremendous efforts are made to avoid that from happening.
Patrick
@trollhattan:
I think that might be enough to have my children home schooled. Why the heck would it be illegal to ask the teacher whether they are packing?
Roger Moore
@SatanicPanic:
Which is why they always present it as wanting guns so they can defend innocent bystanders.
bemused
Good guy with a gun is the fantasy of very frightened people.
A town of less than 9,000 people not far from me had a mugging incident a a couple of years ago. A 77 year old man was brazenly jumped and robbed by two guys in their twenties in a bank parking lot in broad daylight as they say. He didn’t see them coming. The victim was injured, not minor, but recovered. Lot of comments in local papers and social media about he should have had a gun to protect himself Easy to see that how much worse the result could have been but they did blather on.
Soon after a customer at my husband’s job came in and was ranting about the robbery. This senior citizen in his 70’s, not in the best of health who had to lean on the counter, was vehement that the victim should have had a gun to protect himself. I believe some of the employees did point out that the victim having a gun wouldn’t have prevented what happened and could have been used on the victim or someone else. The old white guy wasn’t persuaded but couldn’t debate the topic any longer because he had to get to his doctor appointment.
You can’t argue with extreme fear.
Adam L Silverman
@SatanicPanic: and Martin: whenever someone finds out I’m a long time and experienced martial artists (including as an instructor) and tells me they want to take a self defense class (not take up an actual martial art), I always ask: “why do you feel the need to take a self defense class?” The similar question arises here: “why do you feel the need to purchase a gun?” I usually follow this one with: “if you do need one, do you think you could draw it, aim it, and kill someone to defend yourself or a family member? Because if you can’t, having one is going to be more dangerous than not having one.”
In both cases there are a myriad of answers. When I get the “I need to be able to defend myself” I know that just taking a self defense course is not going to resolve the underlying problem, which is fear. People who just go and take self defense classes go in afraid and able to be harmed/hurt/killed. When they finish the course they come out afraid and able to inflict harm.
So you have a similar issue here. If your need to have a gun is because you’re afraid, just getting a gun – even if you get training – may not be sufficient. If you’re not sure you could use it should you have to, then all you’re doing is setting yourself up for more trouble. Conversely, getting one may be the right thing to do. The problem is that its contextual and there is no one size fits answer.
Every time, however, that I hear someone state that if they can’t take their gun with them to location X because they don’t feel they or their family will be safe, I often wonder about the context. Back in 2014 an open carry advocate was interviewed and gave this type of answer about being prohibited from carrying in his local Dairy Queen or Baskin Robbins or Brewsters or insert your ice cream shop of choice here. I was talking about it with one of my students at the Army War College, a National Guard colonel from TX, and he had the same take as I do: dude, you need to find an ice cream shop in a better neighborhood…
boatboy_srq
@Patrick: The restroom is a very painful place to be shot.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@sharl:
If you said you needed to defend a hammer or a knife from having its feelings hurt, people would think you were nuts, but somehow defending poor, innocent guns from blame doesn’t get classified that way.
MomSense
I feel sick about this. The anguish and grief the families and friends must be feeling.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Adam L Silverman: or as Jim Jeffries asks in his biting stand up piece, “dude, how many fucking enemies do you have?”
boatboy_srq
@Calouste: EXACTLY. 2nd Amendment gets infringed all the BLEEPing time – but because teh gunz aren’t affected nobody blinks.
trollhattan
@Patrick:
Crazy, right? If I were there, not in California, I’d go to the administration and lay it out, “If you can’t tell me who has a gun, you need to make sure you enroll my kid in classes where the teacher does not. If you can’t, we’re gone.”
Even that leaves the possibility/probably of one or more guns on campus at any given time, making the school an order of magnitude more dangerous.
boatboy_srq
@Roger Moore: And we all know innocent bystanders are easy to identify, and glow blue whenever you draw your sidearm…
boatboy_srq
@trollhattan: That’s the one argument for charter schools I find persuasive – assuming the charter has a “no faculty/admin shall pack heat” rule.
Adam L Silverman
@JCT: actually the original skew was in the data operations, not in the collection. Because the outcome variable – reported/recorded defensive uses of a gun – were such a small n and were from a limited geographic distribution within the US, the study authors created a multiplication factor in order to extrapolate out to the entire US. The studies critics have rightfully pointed out that this was not a reliable way to estimate the total number of defensive gun uses per day in the US. If I’m recalling correctly this data operation created an upper bound estimate of around 2 million defensive gun uses per year in the US. This seems just a tad high…
trollhattan
@boatboy_srq:
A Møøse once bit me in the restroom.
Speaking of restrooms, get a load of this guy.
Roger Moore
@Villago Delenda Est:
I was under the impression that an entrenching tool with one edge sharpened- essentially an improvised axe- was generally preferred for hand-to-hand combat over a bayonet. That was apparently true as far back as WWI- Erich Maria Remarque mentions this in All Quiet on the Western Front– and I’ve heard people mentioning it more recently than that.
Villago Delenda Est
@Roger Moore: More blade surface, and it is a better bludgeon. Using a bayonet or a knife takes skill that most infantrymen have not bothered to develop, because one simply does not bring a knife to a gun fight.
sharl
@sharl: OT, it’s been discussed here before on at least one occasion, but a reminder – if anywhere in your comment there is the character string “watson”, FYWP will zap your comment with no notice or feedback; it just disappears into the ether.
The reason I was able to type it in the previous paragraph and in my earlier comment* without having the comment disappeared is that I entered it as follows:
By the way, as others have noted here, this is a way to get around the ban on other words on FYWP’s naughty list, e.g., casino, viagra, cialis, etc.
FYI/FWIW, the explanation (or speculation) on how “watson” became a secret FYWP-forbidden word, as I recall, has to do with another cake enjoyer (actually cupcake lover) named Rebecca Watson who, as founder of the Skepchick International site(s) and a major feminist presence on social media, seems to bring out the worst of the misogynists and girl-haters just by having the audacity to express an opinion. [This especially happens among a certain pathetic subset of atheist and skeptic** dudebro types (**my tribe, alas).] Anyhoo, it has been posited that a braniac in the bowels of FYWP HQ decided to make “watson” a banned word to avoid flame wars – a stupid idea in and of itself – but for whatever reason set things up so that it doesn’t trigger the usual “in moderation” mechanism.
*It only took me about six times trying to post that damn thing before remembering the FYWP secret “watson” prohibition.
ETA: well, darn it to heck – blockquote + code fail.
The work around is “wat{i}{/i}son”, but use angle brackets (“less than” and “greater than” keys) in place of those fancy bracket thingies.
JCT
@Adam L Silverman: You recall correctly, but as far as I recall there were also persistent concerns in all of these studies regarding self-reporting. I’m quite sure that not all of the data were culled from verified 3rd party reports.
And yes, the end estimate was laughably high – but is still quoted endlessly by the gun worshipers.
Nothing quite like having poor studies used to defend “guns everywhere” .
boatboy_srq
@trollhattan: I won’t ask what you were doing with the m00se beforehand…
For flying-in-planes-while-st4p!d, that would have been Darwinism in action if it weren’t likely to have killed others on the flight.
Brachiator
@Adam L Silverman:
A very thoughtful post. Thank you.
boatboy_srq
@benw: Basically how every upwardly-mobile belle should keep her gardenias and her Glocks, all in one rag. The most frightening part is how mainstream ammosexuality is becoming.
trollhattan
@boatboy_srq:
We may have stumbled across what actually happened to MH370. Was it a trip to the loo gone horribly wrong? CNN has this special report….
Roger Moore
@boatboy_srq:
I think it’s more that they have lighter skin color than bad guys.
A guy
Best part of owning guns is that I can
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@agorabum:
It is fairly unusual for women to do mass shootings of total strangers — they are far more likely to kill people they know, particularly their children. I suspect it may be because even mentally ill and/or personality disordered women tend to have more social ties than men with similar issues.
It does happen, though. Laurie Dann tried to kill multiple people in multiple ways (poisoning and fire) but only succeeded in killing one child when she took a gun to a local elementary school. By coincidence, it was in the same town as the Catholic grade school I briefly attended in the late 70s.
Monala
@Patrick: Actually we have heard of a citizen who stopped a mass shooting. But she was unarmed, and talked him down: http://gawker.com/how-one-woman-talked-the-would-be-georgia-school-shoote-1178217739
ETA: what you said.
Roger Moore
@sharl:
You can also use banned words by using an alternative character that uses the same glyph. For example, you could use a Cyrillic “а” (Unicode code point 0x0430) instead of Latin “a” (code point 0x61).
Adam L Silverman
@JCT: Its the problem with most criminological studies. In the US we have use the Uniform Crime Reports, which are compiled by DOJ from state and local crime statistics. We also use the Victimization Survey, which relies on self reporting. We know that both are not completely accurate. Each law enforcement agency records and reports crimes differently. The most egregious I ever saw was hate crimes back in the early 00s. Oregon, which is the skin head capitol of the US reported a tiny number, while Boston reported several thousand. Basically Oregon was recording them as crimes against property and crimes against persons as they didn’t want to tarnish their image.
The good news is that the UCR and the victimization survey always seem to track in the same direction, though the former always has higher numbers than the latter. This is taken by every criminologist I know of as indication that each data set is reliable, even if flawed.
As to the firearms research, the same Northwestern University professor that debunked the bad historical studies done by the former history professor at Emory also debunked Lott’s studies from University of Chicago. Apparently the latter’s results can never be replicated, his data sets are either incomplete or he won’t make them available for replication, and his results disappear when alternative, but equally valid data operations are applied to them. Of course this is almost never remarked upon which is why the guy from Emory is now a bartender in Louisiana and Lott runs a research center with a multi-million dollar endowment.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@A guy:
I’m sure that when you finally snap and murder your wife and children, it will be a great comfort to them that you had the guns handy to kill them with.
boatboy_srq
@Roger Moore: Racism and ammosexuality don’t necessarily go hand-in-hand: they’re seen at all the same parties, but it’s just coincidence.
trollhattan
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
I don’t think we’ll be breaking the mold in Roseburg. Governor has said the shooter is/was a 20 YO male, who the county sheriff has said is dead.
sharl
@Roger Moore: I’ve actually never learned how to use those alternative character codes. It’s on my list of stuff to learn, but not near the top.
I was about to use my limited knowledge of “l33t”-speak and use W4ts0n or something like that, but then I remembered that one weird trick that Steeplejack explained to us not too long ago. It worked.
Vickijean
@Anoniminous: Our shooting at Delta State on September 14, was the 138th school shooting since Sandy Hook. This shooting, just 17 days later was 142.
boatboy_srq
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Much more likely that he’ll shoot his parents so he won’t have to go on living in the basement.
cckids
@A guy:
May have already been addressed, but WRONG.
The college was NOT a gun-free zone. Find another excuse, I’m sure you won’t find it difficult. Anything but reality.
trollhattan
@boatboy_srq:
“At last, the La-Z-Boy is mine, all MINE!”
Matt McIrvin
@Patrick: Also, most gun deaths are suicides. And that’s a large part of the reason I don’t want one in my house. Anyone can become suicidally depressed, or otherwise self-destructively ill. There are lots of ways to harm or kill yourself but some are easier and more final than others, and a gun is near the top of the list.
Matt McIrvin
…And, of course, spree killings are often really an extravagant form of suicide.
Betty Cracker
@Matt McIrvin: I live in fear of this with a relative of mine, who keeps a loaded gun in a home where two out of the four who live there have diagnosed mental illnesses. It’s a fucking tragedy waiting to happen.
ETA: I’ve tried talking some sense into him to no avail. I swear I’ve considered crazy-ass schemes, like stealing his fucking gun myself. But at the end of the day, he’s an adult who has made his choices. I just pray to the FSM he never has cause to regret them.
trollhattan
Take this as you will, from the A.P.
MomSense
@Betty Cracker:
I’m sorry, Betty. I had to take a shotgun out of my grandparents’ home because my grandfather’s dementia made him unfit to have a weapon. I was pretty shocked by the attitude my family took to the whole situation. No one wanted to step in and do something even though everyone acknowledged it “probably wasn’t a good idea” for him to have a gun.
MomSense
Liberal librarian has a good post at thepeoplesview.net
http://www.thepeoplesview.net/main/2015/10/1/two-words
PaulW
how much money is the NRA gonna get in kickbacks from all the gun sales that are bound to happen when they go to their crazybase and whisper “they’re coming for your guns now, go buy MOAR of them before it’s too late hurry”.
I swear to God, this racket is more lucrative than anything the Mafia can come up with. We’re talking a multi-million dollar industry. And the NRA gets a piece of that damn pie.
trollhattan
@MomSense: My buddy’s FIL accumulated so much ammo during his “bunkering” period late in life that after he passed, they called the county sheriff to come to the house and haul it off. The cruiser’s back end was dragging on the pavement as they drove away. Prior to dying he managed to ventilate the house from the inside via the occasional “oopsie” moment. It’s a wonder the MIL managed to survive that period.
I ended up with a cool Italian grenade (empty) from his stash.
Roger Moore
@Betty Cracker:
I have a coworker with a mentally ill family member, and she fortunately had the opposite reaction. Her thought when she realized this person was having serious mental health problems was not to arm herself for protection but to get all the guns out of the house so the other person wouldn’t have access to them. It’s a much smarter approach, but one that takes more courage.
Betty Cracker
PBO will make a statement on the shooting soon, according to CBS News. God knows he’s had plenty of practice speaking words of comfort and peace to yet another community shattered by senseless gun violence. I’m sure he wishes those skills had remained untested.
Betty Cracker
@Roger Moore: The opposite reaction to what?
MomSense
@trollhattan:
It’s really scary because there is no follow up the way we do (not always well) with drivers licenses.
sukabi
@zzyzx: shooting the victim of a carjacking in Texas.
Elizabelle
I look forward to hearing PBO’s speech. Maybe he will do it at 6:30 for the evening news?
I cannot listen to the rest of the coverage. The names and place change, but have heard too much. It’s like living in the George W Bush era, where you just tuned out the words because you knew you could not believe much of what you heard. And it all means such senseless death and destruction of families.
Have been watching movies today, and winced and turned down the sound during a gunfight in the 4:00ish film. (Charade. Great flick. Good dialogue and actors. Came out in 1963, about three weeks after the Kennedy assassination. Audrey Hepburn is dressed in high Audrey/Jackie fashion. So slim and elegant.)
JCT
@Adam L Silverman: Interesting. To be honest we struggle with this in my field (biomedical research) especially with clinical trials. Enormous amounts of money and time expended on questionnaire design. Not to mention the joys of placebo effect.
Hah – though Lott’s landing spot is depressing. Recently one of the academic heavy hitters in my field (known for the fact that no one else could replicate his results…) was finally exposed and had his lab shut down, but that is rare.
goblue72
@A guy: Only gets hard if someone gets shot it is then.
Roger Moore
@Betty Cracker:
I was thinking of the opposite reaction of wanting to have a gun around mentally ill people.
@trollhattan:
It can get worse than that. There was a recent case here in Los Angeles in which some guy managed to accumulate 1200 guns and 2 tons of ammo. The whole thing started when the police found his decomposing body in his car parked down the street. He had apparently told his girlfriend that he worked for some top-secret government agency, and that she should leave his body in the car for his government buddies to take care of. The whole thing is spectacularly weird, though it appears that the worst possible outcomes- somebody stealing the arsenal, a big fire, etc.- were avoided.
Betty Cracker
@Elizabelle: He’s speaking right now. He sounds pissed. And sad. As are we all in the reality-based community.
ETA: Damn, he’s mad as hell! Good for you, Mr. President!
ETA2: Gott-damn! He’s bringing it the NRA — “Even now, we can imagine the press releases being written — ‘We need more guns!’ How can you make that argument with a straight face?”
trollhattan
@Roger Moore:
Was it LA area or San Diego where the guy had so much home-made explosives they burned down the house in situ because they couldn’t safely remove the stuff.
The neighbors must have been thrilled.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@trollhattan:
My late father fortunately managed to avoid any accidental gun discharges (that we know of) but he had quite the stash of ammo that the local sheriff’s department was happy to take off our hands.
He had ammo for an AK-47 but we couldn’t find one anywhere. No idea if he bought one and re-sold it to someone else, used a buddy’s at the shooting range with his own ammo, left it on top of the car and drove away. No clue.
A guy
Rest assured I will not murder my wife and kids. Why would I murder my wife, she’s a stellar example of a real woman. She will tell you abortion has nothing to do with women’s health
Helen
No more fucks to give Obama speaking on my teevee right now.
“We should politicize this”
Telling news orgs to “Tally up the Americans killed by terrorism and put it next to those killed by gun violence.” And put it on TV
trollhattan
@Betty Cracker: @Helen:
Now that’s presidenting! (Thanks for the blurbs, don’t have a feed.)
Linnaeus
@A guy:
Think about that.
? Martin
@A guy: Might want to educate her on what an ectopic pregnancy is. Sounds like she missed health class that day.
A guy
That nothing to do with abortion
Angela
Can we repeal the 22nd Amendment? What a statement. What a president.
cckids
@A guy: Fuck you. Sincerely, and with uncharacteristic but really honest hatred;
fuck
you.
cckids
@A guy: Ignorant as well as a hateful tool. Surprise, surprise.
Truly, I don’t believe for a minute that your wife exists outside of your pathetic imagination.
? Martin
@A guy: Ectopic pregnancies basically always miscarry and are often fatal in the process. Does ‘health’ no longer encompass the life of the mother?
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@A guy:
Uh, yeah, you end an ectopic pregnancy with an abortion. The only ways to end a pregnancy are childbirth and abortion, which is why a miscarriage is medically called a “spontaneous abortion.”
Have you figured out the purpose of a Pap smear yet, or is that just more of that lady stuff you don’t bother your pretty little head with?
Cervantes
@A guy:
I’m a little confused here. If you were planning to murder your family, would you be stupid enough to announce it?
trollhattan
@cckids: @? Martin: @Mnemosyne (iPhone):
One wonders if she’s also perennially barefoot.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@? Martin:
Nope. SATSQ. If the fetus is dead or is going to die, now the mother is required to die, too, to pay for her failure as a woman. Ask the family of Savita Halappanvar who the hospital thought was more important, Savita or her dying fetus.
Elizabelle
@Roger Moore: Interesting to me: I’ve not seen many follow up stories on the Pacific Palisades (LA area) gun hoarder. Why not? Someone has to be piecing out his story, and all the lies.
He was wealthy, so he had a layer of privacy many don’t. But has there been more to this story? It kind of just disappeared, which made me wonder if he did have an inconvenient connection or two.
Betty Cracker
@Angela: I would definitely vote for President Obama for a third term. It was a fantastic statement.
A guy
A voluntary abortion of a heathy fetus is not a woman’s health is, according to my wife.
Soylent Green
I’m up in Portland but have the same access to the news about Roseburg as the rest of you.
The alarming thing about this is the report that the shooter revealed his plans on 4chan and was egged on there by others. That his motivation may have been some social media glory.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@A guy:
I guess your wife was outraged when a 9-year-old rape victim’s healthy fetus was aborted in Brazil. The doctors were excommunicated for it:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/brazil/4968239/Brazils-president-attacks-Vatican-for-condemning-nine-year-old-rape-victims-abortion.html
Why punish the fetus just because the 9-year-old’s stepfather raped her? It wasn’t the fetus’s fault, amirite?
And, no, the “rape and incest” exception isn’t “pro-life.” All you’re doing is deciding whether or not a particular woman has to be punished with a pregnancy. If pro-life is pro-life, then your wife should believe that 9-year-old was required to continue that pregnancy regardless of the risk to her health, or your wife is just another “pro-life” hypocrite who wants to pick and choose who she thinks is worthy of an abortion based on her personal criteria.
A guy
Is the voluntary abortion of an otherwise healthy fetus acceptable?
Elizabelle
The Pacific Palisades gun hoarder (1,200 guns, tons of ammo, a few dozen modified assault vehicles): not much about the late Jeffrey Alan Lash since his July death and the discovery of his cache.
Some August stories: maybe he was living off the women in his life. (Really?) And he had a few more of them than was known at the time. He implied to his ladies that he was on the phone with Condi Rice and David Petraeus.
You know 48 Hours and Dateline are salivating over this, but how strange there’s not more info dribbling out.
Villago Delenda Est
@A guy: You can’t have an abortion.
So STFU, asshole.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@A guy:
Acceptable to whom? Why do strangers have to submit their medical decisions to you for your personal approval?
blueskies
@A guy: Of course it is. Sadly in your case, it’s simply too late.
Aleta
@Adam L Silverman: thanks for the research and things you’ve been putting up, both yesterday and today
? Martin
@A guy: Was the pregnancy voluntary?
Anoniminous
English. How the fuck does it work?