Shorter Howard Schultz: "I'd ask my baristas to keep armed gun nuts out of Starbucks, but I'm afraid they'd get shot" http://t.co/f2OFMvpW7H
— billmon (@billmon1) September 18, 2013
.
What’s on the agenda in your neck of the woods?
This post is in: Excellent Links, Gun nuts, Open Threads
Shorter Howard Schultz: "I'd ask my baristas to keep armed gun nuts out of Starbucks, but I'm afraid they'd get shot" http://t.co/f2OFMvpW7H
— billmon (@billmon1) September 18, 2013
.
What’s on the agenda in your neck of the woods?
This post is in: Excellent Links, Gun nuts, Open Threads
.
Philip Bump, at the AtlanticWire:
The next mass shooting will take place on February 12, 2014, in Spokane, Washington. It will be committed by an emotionally disturbed, 38 year-old white man who will kill seven people and wound six more at a place he used to work using a semi-automatic handgun he purchased legally in the state.
That, at least, is what a look at the data on past such shootings might indicate. We’ll say at the outset: Every assertion in the first paragraph is a function of probability, not fact. The next mass shooting — which will happen somewhere, sometime — will almost certainly not be in that place at that time. But a look at the historic data on such killings, compiled and shared by Mother Jones magazine, makes each of those predictions defensible….
Our sincere hope is that every prediction we made is wrong because no mass killings should happen again. The probability of that happening is not statistically significant.
by $8 blue check mistermix| 98 Comments
This post is in: An Unexamined Scandal, Gun nuts
“It’s hard to know (what could have prevented it),” Gray said on CNN. “We’re continuing this investigation. But certainly, as I look at for example sequestration, which is about saving money in the federal government being spent, that we somehow skimped on what would be available for projects like this, and then we put people at risk. Obviously 12 people have paid the ultimate price for whatever — you know, whatever was done to have this man on the base.”
If the sequester had been Obama’s plan, then Darrell Issa would be convening Benghazi-style hearings trying to pin this shooting on stupid across-the-board budget cuts. Since it was the House Republican Caucus’ plan, Gray is a bad American questioning the patriotism of our brave heroes for even mentioning it.
And, while we’re discussing things Issa won’t investigate, here’s another: how the owner of the contracting firm that hired the shooter got so damn rich.
Update: Now the owner of the contracting company, Thomas Hoshko, is blaming the sequester:
Hoshko said he and other contracting firms rely on the military to approve the security clearances of their employees, and fears that budget crunches have led to faster and less thorough checks.
“None of this was made aware to us or to the company,” he said. “If there’s not full disclosure on this, how do they expect us to make good decisions about who to trust and hire.”
Of course, he can’t be trusted because he leases his yacht. Only yacht owners, not yacht moochers and looters, have a right to opine on the sequester.
This post is in: Gun nuts, Open Threads, Assholes
Per Dave Weigel, tomorrow’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on stand-your-ground laws (which would have given Rep. Louie Gohmert a chance to question Trayvon Martin’s mother) have been postponed due to the Navy Yard shooting.
This post is in: Gun nuts
I’ll give it to David Frum, he knocked this one out of the park.
I’m going to hold off talking about this shooting until my conservative betters let me know whether this was terrorism or just a tragedy. Sounds like the guy might have been white, so it’s looking like this was just a tragedy and it would be horrible to exploit this to stop gun violence. /sarcasm
This post is in: Gun nuts, Assholes, hoocoodanode, Sociopaths
No one could have predicted:
George Zimmerman was taken into custody Monday after an apparent domestic altercation with his wife and her father at a home in Lake Mary, Florida, police said.
“As of right now, (George Zimmerman) has been placed in investigative detention,” Lake Mary police spokesman Zach Hudson said.
The incident comes two months after Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer, was found not guilty of murder in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida.
Hudson said a gun was found in the Lake Mary home, but he added that it was not a part of the altercation.
Shellie Zimmerman, who filed for divorce last week, was the one to call 911, Hudson said.
I’m just glad no one was wearing a hoodie or this could have ended badly.
This post is in: Gun nuts, Open Threads
Guns are to George Zimmerman as land wars in Asia are to superpowers. Never, ever, ever a good idea:
George Zimmerman’s estranged wife called police officers to her father’s house in Florida Monday, saying the former neighborhood watch volunteer who was acquitted of murder threatened her with a gun.
Shellie Zimmerman called police shortly after 2 p.m. Monday, said Lake Mary Police Chief Steve Bracknell.
Zimmerman hasn’t been arrested and officers were at the house trying to determine what happened, Bracknell said.
Early days, could be a misunderstanding, have to hear both sides, she probably had him down on the linoleum in fear for what little frontal lobe capacity he may have, yadda, yadda.
I don’t have words left for how utterly stupid American gun policy is. But on this one? My only surprise is that Zimmerman beat my internal over/under on how long it would take for him to go back down this road.
Oh — and if I’m Shellie Zimmerman, I’m looking long and hard at research like this. [PDF] No snark here; this kind of thing is (literally) deadly serious.
Update: For the record, I checked our posts page before starting this little item. Cole writes faster than I do; hence his ability to nail this story in time for us to land on the FP at almost the same instant. Ah well, as we say in the gum business, double your pleasure, double your fun.
Image: Arthur Devis, John Orde, His Wife Anne, and His Eldest Son William, between 1754 and 1756.