Another mass shooting

[jhawks99]

Pretty sure there are plenty of guns in Laurel county.

[Shirley]

Pretty sure there are plenty of guns in Laurel county.

Well, not sure that's possible.

They must be like chocolate, sex, and money, i.e., there's no such thing as "too much", because I heard there are ~ 120 guns for every 100 people in the US.

[jfish26]

A manhunt remains underway Saturday night for a man considered armed and dangerous after “numerous” people were shot near Interstate 75 in Southern Kentucky.

Seven people were injured but none were killed, London Mayor Randall Weddle said in a Facebook video Saturday night. Weddle said some of the injuries were from a crash associated with the incident rather than gunshots...

https://www.courier-journal.com/story/n ... 128111007/
Another white guy with an AR15.

Randy should be along any minute now to share that "everyone knows" that he is trans.

Meanwhile, it sounds like despite the fact that he was out on bail after being arrested for making terroristic threats, he was still able to buy an AR15 and 2,000 rounds of ammo.

Nah, this wasn’t at a school. That’s where the mental illness tampons are.

[Overlander]

A manhunt remains underway Saturday night for a man considered armed and dangerous after “numerous” people were shot near Interstate 75 in Southern Kentucky.

Seven people were injured but none were killed, London Mayor Randall Weddle said in a Facebook video Saturday night. Weddle said some of the injuries were from a crash associated with the incident rather than gunshots...

https://www.courier-journal.com/story/n ... 128111007/
Another white guy with an AR15.

Randy should be along any minute now to share that "everyone knows" that he is trans.

Meanwhile, it sounds like despite the fact that he was out on bail after being arrested for making terroristic threats, he was still able to buy an AR15 and 2,000 rounds of ammo.

Nah, this wasn’t at a school. That’s where the mental illness tampons are.

Tampons could plug some bullet holes.

[KUTradition]

schoolyard triage

[jfish26]

Republican vice-presidential nominee JD Vance (Ohio), putting a lie to the “pro-life” mantle his party claims, calls mass shootings a “fact of life.” That cringeworthy admission reflects Republicans’ willingness to allow an endless string of mass murders. Scores of dead children each year is a fact of life as long as Second Amendment absolutists, a minority of Americans, hold the rest of us hostage. (The Harris-Walz campaign responded to Vance’s statement: “Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Walz know we can take action to keep our children safe and keep guns out of the hands of criminals. Donald Trump and JD Vance will always choose the NRA and gun lobby over our children.”)

We do know how to reduce gun violence; Republicans simply refuse to challenge the MAGA movement’s gun fetish. The center-left think tank Third Way has documented the disparity between blue states with stricter gun laws and red states with lax gun laws. “The red state murder rate was 33% higher than the blue state murder rate in both 2021 and 2022,” the group reported this year. “2022 was the 23rd consecutive year that murder plagued Trump-voting states at far higher levels than Biden-voting states. … From 2000 to 2022, the average red state murder rate was 24% higher than the average blue state murder rate.”

When felon and former president Donald Trump talks about violent crime (which overall has plunged during Joe Biden’s presidency), he points the finger blue states, specifically big cities (generally run by Democrats, with large non-White populations). In fact, “since 2016, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama have had the three highest murder rates in the country,” Third Way counters. “These three red states have consistently had the highest murder rates for over 15 years now.”

The gun problem is as much a democracy problem as anything else. Gun measures such as universal background checks and red-flag laws garner supermajorities. Even in deep-red Tennessee, for example, large majorities support raising the age to 21 to purchase an assault rifle (64 percent), requiring safe storage of weapons (76 percent) and mandating universal background checks (80 percent). When it comes to an outright ban on assault-style weapons, support is nearly as high. Multiple polls show 60 percent or more favor such a measure. But as long as heavily gerrymandered states produced hyper-conservative state legislatures and the Senate filibuster allows sparsely populated red states to dominate, the popular will is thwarted.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... -gun-laws/

[Sparko]

A lot of the gun problems originated as part of Russian psyops to agitate toward a viable civil war. The NRA was easily manipulated.

[jfish26]

A lot of the gun problems originated as part of Russian psyops to agitate toward a viable civil war. The NRA was easily manipulated.

That's part of it.

Another part is that, like many other prominent issues, Rush and his buddies figured out that THEY'RE CUMMIN' FOR YER GUNZZZZ!!!! is a highly effective way to raise money and drive turnout. Only the people in their teens and twenties during Rush's heyday grew into your dutiful Mike Johnsons and Josh Hawleys - they didn't get that it was a bit.

And then Citizens United blew the guardrails off the economics of our elections, and then Shelby County blew the guardrails off voter suppression.

That, friends, is how you end up with a representative democracy that is neither representative nor democratic.

[twocoach]

https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/09/us/video ... 023-digvid

Of course both father and son are wearing big crosses around their neck.

[jfish26]

Oh, but it’s trans people who are mentally ill.

Trump/RNC are hosting debate watch party at a gun superstore in Georgia less than an hour away from last week's Apalachee High School mass murder.

The same store Ron DeSantis went to immediately after last year's mass murder at a Nashville school.

https://x.com/chrisharriskc/status/1833 ... q_-8Yt1KMA

Would these flag-humpers have held a November 2001 (or 2002, if you want to be a stickler for detail) election rally at a mosque?

(Hint, take it to the other thread, but the answer is the same as the answer to the question, “Would these cross-humpers support the posting of key Quran texts in public schools?”).

[Overlander]

Oh, but it’s trans people who are mentally ill.

Trump/RNC are hosting debate watch party at a gun superstore in Georgia less than an hour away from last week's Apalachee High School mass murder.

The same store Ron DeSantis went to immediately after last year's mass murder at a Nashville school.

https://x.com/chrisharriskc/status/1833 ... q_-8Yt1KMA

Would these cross-humpers support the posting of key Quran texts in public schools?”).

Easy there buddy.
There is only 1 TRUE made up, fictional, all knowing religious deity

[KUTradition]

https://www.wftv.com/news/local/sheriff ... utType=amp

[Shirley]

A manhunt remains underway Saturday night for a man considered armed and dangerous after “numerous” people were shot near Interstate 75 in Southern Kentucky.

Seven people were injured but none were killed, London Mayor Randall Weddle said in a Facebook video Saturday night. Weddle said some of the injuries were from a crash associated with the incident rather than gunshots...

[RainbowsandUnicorns]

Birmingham
https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/22/us/birmi ... index.html

Last night at 2501 South Spaulding in Chicago... 7 people were shot during a "prayer vigil". My guess is 99% of the people who know about the shooting in Birmingham don't know about the shooting in Chicago.
Gee, I wonder why.
Heck, it didn't even make it on here.
https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/repo ... s-shooting

[jfish26]

Cope is a Terrible Way Not to Die

https://defector.com/cope-is-a-terrible-way-not-to-die

One of the things that has always been captivating to me about the TV show Alone is how it illustrates our endless capacity for invention in the absolute worst of times. It's a reality show about survival, but really what that means is adaptability. When you lose a supply of arrows, can you fashion more from branches and scavenged parts? Do you know how to use sphagnum moss to treat a wound after an unfortunate ax misadventure? If a crafty vole has raided your stores of fish, will you be able to find more food or resort to gnarly bark-based teas and intermittent fasting as the frost sets in?

It's a manufactured danger. But part of the appeal is that there's no one coming to the rescue. Ultimately you survive and win, or wind up another sucker ferried back to civilization after an intense flirtation with giardia. Either way, these people have to figure out a new way to live every day.

I've been thinking about adaptations a lot in the week since the most recent apparent assassination attempt on Donald Trump. It's been a week since someone was in close proximity of the former president with a semi-automatic rifle, the second such time in less than three months. The shooter at the campaign rally in July was killed by the Secret Service after firing on Trump; the suspect in the golf course plot is in FBI custody after his plans were foiled.

When someone takes aim at a former U.S. president and current presidential nominee, you expect a swift reckoning. Back in July the head of the Secret Service resigned, and Congress promised an investigation. Republicans assured the public there would be an investigation of the investigation; they also blamed the Democrats' rhetoric for all but pulling the trigger. Now, after the most recent incident, the conversation has instead turned to whether the former president, who is notorious for playing golf and stewing in the faded opulence of the golf courses he owns, should be playing less golf because of the security risks. The problem is the Secret Service. Or the Democrats' mean words. Or the noxious would-be autocrat who has only ever listened to the urges emitting from the pleasure centers of his brain. The problem is the golf.

No one has said maybe it's time Americans should have less access to guns. Because the guns are everywhere. Four people were killed in a shooting at a family party on the island of Oahu in the beginning of this month. Four people died—two students and two teachers—after a mass shooting at Apalachee High School in Georgia that also left nine others injured on Sept. 4. Five people were left seriously injured following a shooting off Interstate 75 in Kentucky on Sept. 7. On the same day of Trump's golf game, police opened fire on a subway fare evader in Brooklyn and wounded four people, including one of the cops involved.

Instead of talking about how to stop a public health emergency with a well known cause, the conversation moved on, again, to solving for life with acceptable violence. A sheriff in Florida saying any teen who calls in threats to their school will get a perp walk and mug shot as a lesson. The parents of students killed in the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School releasing a video game to teach kids how to survive when a gunman enters the building. The New York Times publishing a story on the growth industry of bulletproof school supplies:

Steve Naremore, owner of the ballistic shield company TuffyPacks, acknowledged that it was a "morbid industry." He said that he sold tens of thousands of products to parents within a week of the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.

"People say, 'Oh, you're just profiting off the carnage,'" he said. "And you know what I say? 'Look, don’t blame me. I’m just the fire extinguisher manufacturer, OK?'"

TuffyPacks to solve your fears. Harden all the targets. More secure golf courses; let the good walk remain unspoiled. The answers are all a sign of America's collective despair and political sclerosis, if not its abiding faith in freedom through capitalism.

It's an understatement to say America learned no lessons after 26 people were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012. Congress couldn't find enough courage or other meaningful motivation to pass an assault weapons ban after families had to bury 20 children during the holiday season. So we've been stuck in a traumatic loop where the spasms of gunfire and critical wounds stir political promises, while the only real consequence is a gradual numbing and the faint resignation that it's only a matter of time before things get worse. Parkland happened: 17 students and staff were killed. After that it was Uvalde: 19 students and two teachers dead.

Now we've reached the point where assassination attempts on a former president are just another conversation in passing, one of the many persistent markers of life in any American city, as regular as weather on the eights and the college football scores. The unspoken truth is that if the life of a child doesn't matter, that means anyone is forfeit, even if you once occupied the White House. It's a bleakly egalitarian and uniquely American concept.

To be clear: The problem remains, as ever, feckless politicians and their handlers, those who cozy up to power in the name of public good. Congress passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act in 2022, which has a nice-sounding name for a law that effectively changed very little. All the background checks and mental health screenings and crackdowns on gun trafficking amounted to theater. One party would rather let the death toll rise in defense of the gun, aided by a Supreme Court that believes a conveniently retconned Second Amendment describes the only constitutional right worth preserving. On the other side we have a party caught in its own moral collapse, spinning loose as it offers thoughts and prayers for some, sensible gun measures for the rest. We all just watched a presidential debate in which gun violence was barely mentioned. One candidate has been shot at; the other is telling Oprah she'd pop off a round at anyone who dares break into her home.

In the absence of any material change to the role guns play in this country's civics, all the rest of us have is a basic need to adapt to an unforgiving environment. We go through the motions of our day and let that momentum become a form of forgetting; we numb up and find a way to adjust. So kids run active shooter drills before they've learned multiplication tables. Teachers conceal and carry. States loosen handgun laws because the only way to talk to a gun is with another gun, regardless of who is "the good guy" in that scenario.

None of it has to be this way, but we know no one is coming to the rescue. It's that knowledge, twisted and gripped with the anxiety of the life expectancy of those you love, that eats away at your being. You're left with a brittle survival. You're left to manage, and that very human response makes the hurt grow as the collective sickness prospers. The guns will continue to kill us. Cope is a terrible way to not die.

[KUTradition]

what fails to get mentioned too often are the secondary and tertiary effects on kids 1) just growing up, and 2) trying to learn under these conditions

the added stress and anxiety, the dereliction of academic matters for the sake of safety…and then of course, obviously, the lifetime of trauma for anyone that’s involved when the worst happens

[KUTradition]

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nat ... 347500007/#

a symptom of the normalization, imo

[DeletedUser]

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nat ... 347500007/#

a symptom of the normalization, imo

A first grader at my kid's school told another first grader that he had a gun in his backpack. The kid he told came home and told his mom that his classmate said that. My wife is friends with the mom. The mom called the principal, who then called the boys parents. The boy, his parents, and the principal talked. Apparently the kid was very remorseful and his parents were supportive and involved in the process of making sure he knows how serious that is, and there was not actually a gun in his backpack. Hopefully a good learning moment for him. But slightly unnerving to realize that the only reason we even knew about it is because we know the boys mom who turned him in. Otherwise we'd have never known.

[KUTradition]

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nat ... 347500007/#

a symptom of the normalization, imo

A first grader at my kid's school told another first grader that he had a gun in his backpack. The kid he told came home and told his mom that his classmate said that. My wife is friends with the mom. The mom called the principal, who then called the boys parents. The boy, his parents, and the principal talked. Apparently the kid was very remorseful and his parents were supportive and involved in the process of making sure he knows how serious that is, and there was not actually a gun in his backpack. Hopefully a good learning moment for him. But slightly unnerving to realize that the only reason we even knew about it is because we know the boys mom who turned him in. Otherwise we'd have never known.

do you think the community would’ve been informed had the child actually had a gun?

would the school/district have an obligation, legal or otherwise, to inform parents if there had been a gun (even without incident)?

[DeletedUser]

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nat ... 347500007/#

a symptom of the normalization, imo

A first grader at my kid's school told another first grader that he had a gun in his backpack. The kid he told came home and told his mom that his classmate said that. My wife is friends with the mom. The mom called the principal, who then called the boys parents. The boy, his parents, and the principal talked. Apparently the kid was very remorseful and his parents were supportive and involved in the process of making sure he knows how serious that is, and there was not actually a gun in his backpack. Hopefully a good learning moment for him. But slightly unnerving to realize that the only reason we even knew about it is because we know the boys mom who turned him in. Otherwise we'd have never known.

do you think the community would’ve been informed had the child actually had a gun?

would the school/district have an obligation, legal or otherwise, to inform parents if there had been a gun (even without incident)?

I'm not sure and I don't know. Smaller school district, and my wife is friends with several teachers and the school nurse, so my gut says we'd find out one way or another if something was ever deemed serious.

This was obviously a 7 year old talking nonsense. And for the record, he didn't say he was going to shoot anyone, he just said he had one. It wasn't said as a threat, but rather he thought it sounded cool I guess.