states’ rights
Nothing too surprising here, but it illustrates the need for gun safety classes:
The study, published Thursday in the journal Science, estimates that the 3 million guns sold in the several months after Sandy Hook caused about 60 more accidental gun deaths than would have occurred otherwise. Children were killed in a third of them — some 20 youngsters, the same number as died at Sandy Hook.
The 21-year-old man who shot and killed two students at Aztec High School in New Mexico on Thursday had previously been investigated by the FBI for online comments about planning a mass shooting.
San Juan County Sheriff Ken Christesen on Friday identified the gunman as William Atchison. Christesen said at a news conference that the shooting was a “planned event” and that Atchison purchased a 9mm Glock last month, which he used in the shooting.
Well, this is certainly a thing.
If, as appears to be the case, we are going to just treat gun deaths the same as auto accidents, perhaps we should afford them the same news coverage as auto accidents. Why get everyone upset when the chance of meaningful reform is precisely zero?
That might be a question to ask a news anchor while being interviewed, if one can score an interview. Thouhh they still do plenty of car crash fatality reporting on local news.
A math lesson overheard at Kentucky schools earlier today: Guns on campus + more guns on campus = safer campus.
…and so the irony of more guns everywhere equals more mass killings, more school shootings, goes unnoticed.
spurned love…of course it was a guy, of course he was obsessed with guns, of course the AR-15 was used again.
This story has been sent to me by two different family members so far this morning. I’m the bad apple that won’t fall in line and see reason, so every time something like this pops up my text message alerts start sounding.
Man carrying concealed pistol stops attack on Utah police officer
“I carry a gun to protect me and those around me, but primarily I carry a gun to protect my family first and foremost," Meyer, who has a concealed-carry permit, told FOX13. “Outside of that, if I were to use my gun to protect anyone it would be law enforcement or military personnel.”
“Had he not been in the right place at the right time, who knows what would have happened,” Waters said. “But he definitely stopped the attack from continuing and becoming much worse. He might have even saved either one of their lives. It could have gone really bad, even for the suspect.”
While I’m glad this guy stopped the incident from possibly turning into something more appropriate for the police shooting thread, rare examples where the stars align like this don’t off-set all the other shootings actually taking place in the same time frame. But hey, I’m being told all those other shootings could just as easily be prevented with more guns.
Another week, another mass high school shooting. This time in Florida. Details still scarce. Just multiple victims, and sheriff says shooter at large.
At least 20 hurt. In Parkland, Broward County. Shooter still at large.
Mass murder of children is the price we must pay to be safe from criminals.
I have new thesis about this after speaking to some 60+yr old baby boomers over the last couple weeks, and if i were to summarize the thesis, it would be one word: suburbanization.
In brief, the life-cycle of baby boomers has been moving from suburb to increasingly disconnected suburb in an almost ossified bubble of success and values from their parents’ generation and who see their own success and lifestyles being threatened by all these irresponsible people doing irresponsible things around them, and not knowing what else to do about it but moving into another gated community with even higher walls. Because on a fundamental level they don’t see themselves as part of the same society anymore, that all those dirty, poor, irresponsible people doing drugs and ruining their lives are, on some existential level, kind of a different country now.
They were talking about something they heard on Facebook - and let me be honest i can’t verify a single thing about this - that supposedly Orange County had opened up their beaches for homeless people, and that someone had ridden a bicycle and recorded a video that was “20 minutes long”. How horrible! they exclaimed. Yea, they were just dumping trash everywhere, ruining the beaches, what a disaster. “Well, why don’t they put them in homeless shelters?” I asked. “They’re all full!” they responded. “Well, maybe we should raise taxes and build more homeless shelters then, right?” Silence.
Because it’s not us, it’s them. And we’re tired of paying for them.
It’s the same thing with gun control. They don’t understand what sort of world does the terrible things that happen, they shake their head… but, what can you do? Change? Why do i have to change when i’m not doing anything wrong? It’s like their whole generation is the mayor from Jaws. But the reason they’re unlike the mayor is because they no longer see themselves as being part of the same society.
We all know how much social media balkanizes communities. Isn’t this exactly what has been going on with suburbanization over the last 40 years geographically? Suburbanization is a decades long sticking your head in the sand, and nothing they want to do more than stick their head in the sand about guns.
It’s amazing to me that these things have become so common that they almost seem routine. It’s like I’m reading about a train derailment or a highway pileup caused by a bad snowstorm.
Quick quiz:
There was a school shooting less than a month ago at a high school. 18 injured, two killed. The event didn’t make it to the front page of the Washington Post. Can you name the state it happened in? Kentucky.
Last November. 12 injured, five killed at an elementary school. Guy rammed through the fence and started shooting at the “temp” trailers. Which state? California.
September of last year, a kid killed a classmate in his High School. The gun jammed and another student and a janitor subdued him before he could continue firing. The state? Washington.
August of last year. 13 injured, one killed at a high school. It was a guy pissed off at his neighbors. Which state? Texas.
April of last year. Three people killed in an elementary school. Jealous husband. Which state? California.
Last question: One of the above I made up. Which? The fourth one.
It will take a Republican’s children getting slaughtered before they will ever take responsibility to try and fix this issue (guns). But until then, they will remain disconnected and not care because it’s “other people’s problems”.
FTFY to be brutally realistic.
Thanks, that’s what I actually meant to type and left that out.
Nope, couldn’t answer any of your pop quiz questions!
I wonder how the political response to the latest school shooting will go. Oh wait, I don’t have to guess, the algorithm is clearly understood:
